Cheat's Pasta Gratin

An eager tester waits for her turn to eat

Weekends are baking experiment days.  And when we eat in as well, the sink goes into overdrive mode and the washing personnel ( that would have to be my long suffering hubby ) gets into a frenzy madly clearing dirty utensils as fast as I generate them.

This calls for an occasional cheating so that weekend would be an extra time at the jogging circuit or computer game for him ( mainly the latter ! ).  This gratin was 'premeditated' as I had saved 1/2 a chicken the day before for this. Almost every other ingredient can be obtained from my pantry or freezer. Although nothing was created from scratch, the folks attacked the gratin with gusto, which gave me the suspicion that they do enjoy fast food sometimes.

The star of the dish was the Waitrose Stilton Blue which I had carted from London 2 months ago. I love it for its mild and milky taste without the heavy accented saltiness. It helped that it was much cheaper than most fancy stilton grade blues.  If blue cheese is not your thing, a good substitute would be aged cheddar which would do the job beautifully as well.

For 4

Ingredients :

250g pasta

1/2 cooked chicken, deboned and fleshed

1/2 can cream of corn and chicken

1/2 cup fresh milk

1/2 cup stilton, broken up

2 cups pizza cheese

Method :

Oil a baking dish and set aside.

Preheat oven to 200C.

Cook pasta according to instructions on packet plus 1 more minute.

Meanwhile,  in a large mixing bowl, combine cooked chicken,  creamed soup, milk, stilton and stir.

Drain pasta and transfer hot pasta into mixing bowl. Stir quickly.

Transfer pasta mixture to the baking tray. Top with  pizza cheese and bake at 200C for 15 minutes or until the cheese surface is browned.