Ricotta, spinach and courgette pasta with tomato

Well, there's no suitable short and snappy (or even vaguely Italian) name for what we made the other night. Our intention was to make spinach and ricotta cannelloni but upon discovering that we neither had enough spinach nor cannelloni tubes, I improvised something else. In order to replace the spinach I grated up a courgette and turned the whole dish into a kind of pasta bake with tomato sauce layered under the ricotta and vegetable-coated pasta. This is a travesty, a veritable joke, but my goodness it was a tasty joke. If you're going to be snooty and purist about Italian style food, look away now.

Serves 2
180-200g dried pasta (we used elicoidali - short fat tubes like rigatoni that crisp up nicely on top when baked)
125g ricotta
a good splash of milk
about 30g frozen spinach, defrosted
1 medium-large courgette, coarsely grated
a big handful of fresh basil leaves, torn
a large handful of freshly grated Parmesan cheese, about 25g
250ml tomato passata
1 clove of garlic, left whole but lightly crushed with the side of a knife
a pinch of dried oregano

Pre-heat your oven to 180C. Put a small splash of olive oil in a small saucepan over a medium heat. Add the garlic clove. When you start to smell the garlic, add the passata, the oregano and some black pepper, and turn down the heat so that the sauce bubbles intermittently. Now put your pasta on to boil - cook it until just under-done e.g. 7.5 minutes if it says 10 on the pack. Meanwhile, defrost the spinach in the microwave, refresh it under cold water and squeeze it dry. (You can use fresh spinach, in which case wash it and place in a pan just with the water that is left on the leaves and place over a moderate heat, shaking the pan occasionally until the spinach has wilted. Cool and squeeze dry with your hands.) Grate the courgette and add it to the spinach in a bowl. Add the ricotta, most of the Parmesan cheese, a good grinding of black pepper and the torn basil leaves, reserving a few leaves for later. Mix it all together. Now add a little milk to let the sauce down a bit, just so that it's not too stiff to stir into the pasta. When the pasta is done, drain it and stir the ricotta sauce into it until they are well mixed. Remove the tomato sauce from the heat and take out the garlic clove. Now spread the tomato sauce all over the base of an oven-proof dish - a lasagne dish or something similar will do. Now tip the pasta on top of the tomatoes. Tear over a few more leaves of basil. Sprinkle with the remaining Parmesan cheese. Place in the oven and bake for 20 minutes until golden and lightly crispy on top. That's it! Serve it with green vegetables or salad.

Sometimes the best things are the ones you make up in times of need. A variation on this would be to use some tinned tuna and a handful of peas, or blanched, chopped green beans, or sweetcorn if you like it. Or try cooked salmon and broccoli chopped into small florets and parboiled.