Mushroom & Spinach & Sausage Pasta Bake

Where do you get these recipes? My sister said.  Yeah, I don't know, I mean, Instagram or the internet?

This is what my sister said after she tried this dish that I brought for Kenton and I to her house. I have been really enjoying these recipes and all the crazy variations you can do with them. And they have NO CREAM or chicken stock (sick of cooking with both of them).

So I had seen this variations of pasta bake with sausages and it just looked pretty fantastic. So I kinda made this recipe the other based on the other pasta bake I did the other day that you can find here: https://lajoliecuisine.blogspot.com/2020/11/artichoke-chicken-pasta-bake.html. 

The key to this recipe is to get super flavorful strong yummy sausages and let them be the star of the show. The rest of the ingredients, should be for color and soft and adding a slight bit of flavor but not too much, to not overpower the dish. 

INGREDIENTS:

-250 grams of pasta.

-30o grams of mushrooms.

-5 or 6 bunches of spinach.

-75 grams of grated cheese.

-10 yummy flavorful pork sausages. 

-A handful of breadcrumbs.

For the white sauce:

-1 spoonful of flour.

-1 spoonful of butter.

-200 ml of milk.

-salt and pepper.

-2 teaspoons of dijon mustard.

-50 grams of grated cheese.

1. Prepare the pasta, boil in water with some oil. (Tip: 250 grams of pasta is enough for one of those normal baking trays for about 4 meals). Set apart.

2. Cook the sausage, cutting all of them in slices, fry them and let them brown a little. Set apart.

3. Prepare the mushrooms and cut up in halves. Set apart.

4. Begin preparing the white sauce: melt the butter in a saucepan in low heat, now add the flour and create the paste, now add the milk and stir and stir until there are no lumps. Bring it to a boil and it will thicken. Now add the mushrooms and let the sauce get mushroomy flavor stirring. Add pepper and the dijon mustard to add flavor. Let it all cook there for 10 minutes at least and then when you see that all flavorful have come together, add the handful of spinach (no stems). You can add cheese to the sauce but it is not neccesary. I wanted mine to taste mushroomy and the spinach is simply for color purposes.

5. Okay, time to assemble it all together! So now turn the oven on to 220 degrees (almost higher temperature) both on the top and on the bottom. 

6. Add a little bit of the wonderful sauce to the baking dish, like a bed of cream for the pasta to sit on. Now add the pasta and on top add the sausage in slices that you have already cooked. Now toss around so that is all evenly distributed. 

7. Now add your wonderful sauce all around and toss well with a spoon so that everything is well mixed and the sauce is everywhere around the pasta.

8. Add the grated cheese and THEN, the breadcrumbs for the special touch. 

9. Stick it in oven for 2o minutes until the top is brown and that's it.

Very good! This dish is awesome because you can forget about cooking for at least 2 days, so you can dive into your books :)