Pasta bake: a recipe to cure the January blues

I love pasta bake more than is reasonable: I would struggle to name a dish that brings the same level of comfort even from first thought. From the moment I consider making one, I am already reassured: confident in the knowledge that it is a dish which will deliver everything that is required for culinary succour.

This isn’t your average student pasta bake: slow-cooked ragu, a topping cooked at a hot temperature until blackened in places and blistering; a time investment that means delayed gratification, but for the most part can be left to its own devices, to simmer, to bubble, to bake. Saucy and deeply savoury, hot and packed with carbs: it can’t fail to please.

This recipe has magical powers: it can quell hangovers, make you forget broken boilers, fix January blues and draw recalcitrant teenagers from their rooms.

I don’t pretend for one moment that this dish tends towards authenticity; this is the pasta bake of my 1990s childhood in Northern England, peered at through oven doors, the smell winding up staircases. But it is loosely based on the Greek pastitsio, a baked pasta dish made with minced lamb and topped with a dairy-based sauce.

The skin of a pasta bake is more fought over in my household than even that of a rice pudding or roasted chicken. Made here not with béchamel but with something closer to a savoury custard: Greek yoghurt bound with eggs and studded with mature cheddar and crumbled feta, that melt and meld together to produce a gently wibbling, luscious topping.

Makes Supper for 4

Takes 45 minutes

Bakes 30-45 minutes

What you need

2 tablespoons oil

1 carrot

2 ribs of celery

1 medium onion

2 cloves garlic

1 tablespoon tomato paste

400g lamb mince

200ml lamb stock