Roasted Salmon and Spinach Pasta Bake

Can you tell that posting more entries is also a bit of a vague resolution? I've been up since 5.30 today to help my mum walk to her car and make sure she got to work ok and am going to make myself some porridge in a minute, but this is what I made for dinner last night. I actually concocted it about a month ago when I had some roast salmon leftovers to use up - but it was so good that I decided to recreate it from scratch again!

You will need:

3 salmon fillets

for the marinade:
1 tbsp honey
1 tbsp soy sauce
1/4 lemon squeezed
sea salt
pepper
1/4 tsp chilli flakes

cheese sauce (I use Delia's recipe here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/database/anykindofcheesesauce_70007.shtml but I use cheddar only and I add 1/2 tsp of English mustard at the finish)
1-2 tbsp green pesto

500g spinach sauteed in butter with 1 clove of garlic

200g broccoli cut into mall florets, steamed

600g pasta (I really like using 3 colour pasta in this recipe as it brings all the colours together: reddy pink of the salmon and green of the veg!)

extra cheese and (this is really old school this bit) crushed ready salted crisps to top


1. Marinade salmon. Preheat oven to 200C.
2. Make up cheese sauce and stir in pesto.
3. Roast salmon fillets in oven (Our heat-demon Rangemaster takes 15minutes but I guess normal ovens would be more like 20-25?)
4. Boil pasta until al dente, steam broccoli and sautee spinach.
5. Break up salmon fillets into large flakes (setting a bit aside for your cats is optional).
6. Stir pasta, vegetables and salmon into cheese sauce and pour into a large oven dish.
7. Top with extra cheese and crisps, some extra black pepper and then place back in oven or grill until cheese is golden brown.

I suppose you could make it less of a faff by frying off the salmon and boiling the spinach - but I think it's the roasting and sauteeing that give the bake more flavour.

It's perfect comfort food for this weather!