Rwandan Expat Easy Cheesy Penne and Mozzarella Casserole

I’m not much of a food blogger, or vlogger for that matter. But I do LOVE food and firmly believe that good food doesn’t need to be sacrificed just because I have to change things according to here I live.
Also, I love dinners that can be made in a pinch. Especially when I already have most the ingredients on hand.

This is one of my favorites adapted from The Food Charlatan. I love love love her recipes and highly recommend her site! For this one see her original post Extra Cheesy Penne and Mozzarella Casserole. IF you so happen to live here in Kigali, Rwanda and need a new dish to make at home (or for some of us, have someone else make for you ;) ) Here are the changes along with a link to make homemade pesto, because really I can’t bring myself to pay $15 for half a cup of pesto.

Most of the ingredients can be bought at Frulep or MTN. Lastly, I highly suggest growing basil. You can buy the seeds in town.
This particular time when I made it I didn’t have crushed tomatoes so I just blended up 4-5 fresh tomatoes and it worked fine.

Happy Cooking!

Rwandan Expat Easy Cheesy Penne and Mozzarella Casserole –

Serves Serves 6-8    

Ingredients

• 500g penne pasta
• 1 100g can crushed tomatoes
• 1 cup basil pesto*
• 1 teaspoon sugar
• 2 teaspoons dried basil
• 2 teaspoons dried oregano
• 1 teaspoon garlic powder
• 1 teaspoon salt, or more to taste
• 1/4 teaspoon pepper
• 4 small bags of mozzarella or 800-900g of mozzarella

Instructions

1. Preheat your oven to 190 degrees C.
2. In a 3 quart pot or larger, add a few quarts of water and salt until it tastes like seawater (about 1 tablespoon.)
3. Bring to a boil, then add the penne and cook until al dente; check the package for times and check early. You don’t want it mushy.
4. When the pasta is done, drizzle with a little oil to prevent sticking. (Or if the sauce is all ready to go, just dump it in.)
5. Meanwhile, butter/oil the sides of a 9×13 inch casserole dish (or any shape dish that hold 3 quarts)
6. Add the can of crushed tomatoes to the casserole dish. Add the pesto, sugar, basil, oregano, garlic, salt, pepper, and red pepper flakes. Stir together.
7. Stir in the pasta.
8. Shred two bags of mozzarella. (Confession, I freeze two of the bags of mozzarella so they shred nicely) Stir into the pasta.
9. Shred or slice the remaining  2 bags of mozzarella and sprinkle/arrange on top of the casserole.
10. Bake at 190 for 20 minutes.

*For homemade pesto here’s my go to. Sometimes pine nuts are hard to find. And sometimes I don’t feel like dishing out the mula, so I skip them and use extra parm cheese. That said I’ve heard from other expats that macadamia nuts work nicely!