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.