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This easy baked penne is tasty, perfect for meal planning and ideal for a weeknight dinner. Leftovers are possibly even better the next day!
Baked penne with eggplant
This is one of those dishes that I love making when I have friends over for dinner. It’s super easy to prepare the entire dish in advance and I just pop it in the oven 30 minutes or 45 minutes before ready to serve and I can enjoy the company without any stress of being in the kitchen all the time.
I tend to serve it with some crispy baguette and herbal butter. So delicious! I make this with eggplant and zucchini, but you can vary with the vegetables if you want. This is also really good with mushrooms for a more autumn version.
What you need for the baked penne?
For making this delicious pasta oven dish you need pasta (obviously) I went with penne this time as I love how that works in this dish, but if you already have pasta in the cupboard feel free to use whatever shape, as long as it is a short pasta. This won’t work with a longer pasta like spaghetti or tagliatelle. So short pasta like penne, macaroni or anything will be fine to use.
It also has quite some vegetables in there, in this case zucchini and eggplant. I love combining those but if you want you can double the amount of one and leave out the other. So two zucchini and no eggplant or two eggplant and no zucchini.
With ground meat
It also has ground meat, which I love in this dish but you can leave it out if you prefer a vegetarian one. Or replace with lentils. Lentils have this funny way of acting like a good replacement for ground meat. Something to do with the texture I guess.
Other than that it is mostly herbs and flavor makers like onions, garlic and tomatoes. It looks like a lot of ingredients but it’s not too bad if you take a closer look. All in the name of deliciousness of course.
Love a good pasta dish?
And who doesn’t? Have a look at the below recipes as well:
- Creamy pasta salad with tuna
- Pasta with gorgonzola
- One pot pasta parmesan
- One pot pasta with ricotta
Baked penne with eggplant, tomatoes and cheese
Ingredients
- 2 tbsp olive oil
- 350 g ground beef
- 1 onion finely minced
- 1 eggplant cut into cubes
- 1 zucchini chopped in cubes
- 1 tbsp garlic minced
- 3 pieces tomatoes chopped into cubes
- 150 ml tomato sauce
- 4 tbsp oregano chopped
- 3 sprigs thyme leaves only
- 300 g penne or other type of pasta
- 200 g mozzarella chopped or grated
- 100 g aged cheese grated
How to make baked penne
- Preheat the oven to 180 C. (350 F)
- Brush a large enough baking dish with 1 tbsp of olive oil.
- In a heavy skillet first brown the ground meat until cooked. Bake the eggplant separately until cooked and set aside. Add the chopped onions to the meat, with the garlic and zucchini and bake until cooked. Add the eggplant back in and add the chopped tomatoes. Leave cooking until the tomatoes have lost most of their liquid at which point you add the tomato sauce in. I use a sofrito tomato base for this.
- Mix in chopped oregano and thyme and season the dish to your liking with salt and pepper and remove from the heat. Cook your penne pasta in 11-12 minutes until al dente.
- Drain, rinse and add a little olive oil to the pasta to prevent it from sticking. Add the pasta in your vegetable mixture and fold in 2/3 of the grated cheese.
- Transfer to the baking dish. Put the mozzarella on top of the dish and finish with the remaining grated cheese. Bake this dish for 25-30 minutes in the oven. If it becomes to brown then you can cover it with aluminium foil.
Nutrition Information per portion:
Disclaimer:
The nutritional values above are calculated per portion. The details are based on standard nutritional tables and do not constitute a professional nutritional advice.
