Cauliflower Cheese Pasta Bake with Bacon Crumble

I promised recipes on my site from my Aldi buys so here is the first. This is a great cook in advance recipe. The quanities are for my family of four (bearing in mind that we are one large male, me, I do like my food and two toddlers so I would say it would feed 3 adults).

Cauliflower Cheese and Pasta Bake with Bacon Crumble

Ingredients
500g Pasta (I like Waitrose Essentials twists for this recipe they hold there shape and the source well)
Half a head of Cauliflower (I would say from a medium sizes cauliflower)
2 handfuls of frozen peas
100g Chedar Cheese
1 tbsp your favourite mustard
3tbsp plain flour
500ml milk (maybe a little if the sauce thickens too much)
150g bacon miss cuts
Small handful of breadcrumbs
3 tbsps Parmaesam Cheese

How I did it

• Start by putting your water on to boil for the pasta. You need the largest pan you have so that the pasta has room to move. Salt the water well otherwise the pasta won't taste of a thing.
• Cut the cauliflower into bit size florets.
• Cut the bacon into little pieces and put a frying pan onto warm.
• The water for the pasta should be boiling quickly by now so add your pasta. You want your pasta to be just under cooked (just so not still raw) and I cook the cauliflower in with the pasta to save using another pan which will need about 5 minutes cooking so you may have to do the maths from your own pasta, sorry...
• Add the bacon to the frying pan and cook until crisp then set aside.
• Add the milk and flour to a small saucepan and whisk as you put it on the heat. If you are making the white sause this way you have to keep stiring the whole time. Once it starts to thicken (which will take about 5 minutes, it isn't that long really), add the mustard, chedar cheese and taste.
• Drain your pasta and cauliflower, throw in the peas and mix in the cheese sauce. Put the whole lot in an over proof dish then make your crumble by mixing together the bacon, breadcrumbs and cheese. Then sprinkle the crumble over the top of the pasta.
• The oven time will depend on whether you are going to put it in the over straight away, in which case it would need 10 minutes at 200 degrees, from the fridge, 30 minutes at 180, or room temp 20 minutes at 180. You are bascially warming it through and browning the top.

This is a great mid week meal and the cauliflower are only 59p each at Aldi this week and I used less than half here. The cheese was buy one get one free from Tesco. I don't shop at Tesco much but cheese does last in the fridge for a long time. The bacon miss cuts make a very small amount of meat go a long way without looking mean. The addition of cauliflower and peas are because I can't serve a meal without veg, I just can't, I feel some kind of Catholic, Italian guilt about it and feel I have to stand by the fridge eating veg if I don't.