Apricot chicken lasagne/pasta bake

For lack of a square dish and the patience to snap sheets of lasagne, I boiled up some orecchiette and made it into a pasta bake. Also, I was utterly lame and used a jar of pasta sauce.

I made this when I was a student and my flatmates made me cook it as much as possible!

Ingredients

250 g of pasta, cooked.

Pasta sauce

3 tbsp olive oil

1 chicken breast
2 onions, diced.
2 tsp minced garlic
1 small head of broccoli, chopped up
1 capsicum, diced. (Tonight I used 1/2 red, 1/2 yellow)
1 jar of Leggo's "Mushroom bolognese" pasta sauce (or make your own!)

Apricot sauce

25 g butter
Approximately 2 tbsp flour
1 150g pottle of apricot yoghurt.
milk
freshly cracked pepper

Steps

1. Cook the pasta: In a large pan, boil a lot of water, add olive oil and salt, and cook the pasta, a couple of minutes shy of the cooking instructions. (It'll cook in the oven later). Drain and set aside.
2. Make the pasta sauce: Heat the olive oil in a heavy pan on medium heat. Toss in the onions until soft (4-5 minutes).
3. Add the chicken and garlic and brown. Toss in the vegetables and stir fry for a couple more minutes.
4. Turn on the oven to bake mode at 160º C
5. Reduce the heat to low and pour in the pasta sauce. Stir occasionally, and leave to simmer while you make the apricot sauce.
6. Melt the butter in a saucepan in an element on a medium heat until bubbling slowly.
7. Add the flour a bit at a time and mix it into the butter. Add flour until thickened into a paste.
8. Add a couple of tbsp of milk, and the yoghurt. Add another 100 mL of milk and stir vigorously.
9. Keep adding milk and stirring until it is a smooth, pourable sauce, but not too runny! Add some cracked pepper for good measure
10. Layer the pasta, the pasta sauce, the apricot sauce into a pasta dish. Top with cheese and more cracked pepper.
11. Bake it in the oven for 35-40 minutes.
12. Remove from the oven and leave to cool for a couple of minutes!
13. Eat.

Notes

Tonight's edition was a bit more subtle than I planned. The apricot sauce was rich and creamy and delicious but lacked the apricot oomph. Perhaps needed a brand of yoghurt with more apricot bits, or added a couple of finely chopped dried apricots. Something to try next time.

It always tastes better the second night (if it lasts that long!).