Baked Penne with ginger cream and asparagus GLUTEN FREE

Baked Penne with ginger cream and asparagus

serves: 5

time: 40 minutes (including the bake time)

mmmmmm. So this recipe came about because:

1. A friend of mine gave me a package of gluten free penne

2. cheese was on sale! (as well as asparagus)

3. It was a holiday long weekend and nothing was opened, boredom came.

So let's get started!

Ingredients:

(one thing about my recipes are that they often don't have exact measurements, I usually play it by feeling, but I'll try to get the measurements right for you guys!)

Handful of         penne (about 2 cups)

10 stems            asparagus

2                        onions (medium sized)

1/3 cup               fresh ginger (cut in chunks)

1.5 cup               milk (I used soy milk)

1/2 tsp                honey (can substitute it with rice syrup, maple syrup, etc)

4                        garlic cloves

1 Tbsp               olive oil

1/2 tsp               pepper

1 tsp                  dry rosemary (optional)

1/2 tsp               ground nutmeg

1/4 tsp               salt

alot of               cheese

10                     shrimps (optional and can be substituted with chicken)

I know the ingredients sound like a lot, but as you will notice with my recipes, they're mostly ingredients that you'd have in your fridge already, or are easy to get a hold of at a relatively cheap price. Yay budget cooking!

 I have to admit, this recipe might seem a little bit complicated and annoyingly long but I assure you that it's easy, just a little bit time consuming. Just follow step by step! I will try to have the process work photographed for the next recipe.

1. In a small sauce pan, add milk with cubed ginger, simmer over medium heat, stirring occasionally.
2. Cook penne to al dente. Make sure not to overcook because they're going to cook in the oven as well! drain and add to the milk mixture over low heat, stir gently occasionally.
3 Preheat oven to 385 F.
4. In a pan, sauté 7 asparagus stems (cut into smaller pieces), onions, crushed garlic gloves, pepper, nutmeg, honey, rosemary and salt in olive oil, until onions are clear, or until the kitchen smells like heaven! remove from heat, and put aside.
5. Line the bottom of the glass pan with penne - remove from the milk mixture but leave the mixture in the pan! Then top the penne with sauteed vegetables.
6. Add a few chunks (I added about 4 long stripes) of cheese (I used light havarti) in the milk mixture. If you feel that there isn't enough milk, add more milk, but I'm not a saucy-baked-penne kind of a person, so I didn't add any more milk.
7. Add shrimp, or chicken, etc, to the milk mixture (now thick with cheeeese!)
8. drizzle the milk mixture over the penne and vegetables
9. Generously cover the top of the glass pan with cheese, maybe 3 or so asparagus stems, as well.
10. Bake for 15 minutes in the oven
11. EAT!

Ginger naturally has a very strong flavour, so by heating it up with milk, the flavour infuses with milk really, really nicely.

 So first bite: it was like, heaven in my mouth. mmmm
and since it's only me, I have so much left overs for tomorrow and the day after that and even the day after that! I'm a happy girl.

These are 100% buckwheat gluten free penne! so delicious, and only takes about 8 minutes to cook.

You can probably find them at your local health stores, but if not, all grocery stores should carry rice penne, or you can just use regular penne if you aren't gluten intolerant.

Bon appétit!