Tuna Pasta Bake with Tomato and Lemon Ricotta

Some of the meals we love the most aren’t the fanciest ones.

They’re the dinners we come back to when everyone is hungry, there isn’t a lot of time to spare and we want something comforting and delicious without needing to think too hard about it.

This Tuna Pasta Bake with Tomato and Lemon Ricotta is very much that kind of recipe.

I’ve always had a soft spot for a good pasta bake. There is something lovely about bringing a bubbling dish to the table and letting everyone help themselves. They’re generous, they’re practical and, perhaps most importantly, they usually make people very happy.

But I do think a pasta bake needs to be really tasty.

There’s nowhere for blandness to hide.

So although this recipe is intentionally simple, there are a few little things in it that make a big difference.

A tuna pasta bake with a little something extra

The sauce starts with onion, garlic and a little fennel seed.

I love fennel with tomato and fish. You don’t need much and I don’t want the dish to taste strongly of fennel. It just adds another layer of flavour and works beautifully with the tuna.

There’s tomato paste and passata, good-quality tuna and plenty of seasoning.

Then comes the part I especially love.

Fresh ricotta is mixed with lemon zest, Parmesan, salt and pepper and spooned through the pasta in little pockets before it goes into the oven.

I don’t stir it all the way through.

That’s important.

You want to come across those lovely soft spoonfuls of lemon ricotta as you eat. The lemon lifts the whole dish and stops the cheese and pasta from feeling too heavy.

It’s only a small addition, but it turns a very familiar tuna pasta bake into something a little more special.

Simple food, done well

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about simple food.

Not boring food. Not food made without care.

Just genuinely good food that fits into real life.

Over the years I’ve learnt that you don’t always need lots of ingredients to create wonderful flavour. Sometimes it’s simply about cooking the onion properly, giving the tomato paste a minute in the pan, seasoning generously and knowing when one extra ingredient will genuinely improve a dish.

This recipe is a good example of that.

There aren’t peas, corn, breadcrumbs or a dozen things competing with each other.

It’s pasta, tomato, tuna, ricotta, lemon and cheese, with a few flavour builders underneath.

That is enough.

Which tuna should you use?

Because tuna is one of the stars here, use a tin you really like.

Tuna in olive oil is beautiful and has a little more richness, but tuna in springwater is perfectly good too. Just make sure you drain it well.

I also like to keep some of the tuna in larger pieces when I fold it into the sauce rather than breaking it down completely. It gives the finished pasta bake much better texture and you actually taste the tuna.

Tinned tuna is one of those ingredients I nearly always have in the pantry. It’s useful for quick lunches, salads, pasta and dinners like this one when you haven’t planned particularly far ahead.

Fish also forms part of the protein foods included in the Australian Dietary Guidelines.

Why the lemon ricotta works

The ricotta isn’t there to make this into a creamy pasta bake.

The tomato sauce is still very much the base of the dish.

Instead, the ricotta gives you little creamy pockets through the pasta, and the lemon zest brings freshness to every mouthful.

If you can get beautiful fresh ricotta, use it. This is one of those times when you’ll really notice it.

Mix it simply with lemon zest, Parmesan and seasoning and try not to eat too much of it before it makes its way into the baking dish.

I speak from experience.

A very handy make-ahead dinner

This is also a useful dinner if you like to get ahead.

You can put the whole pasta bake together earlier in the day, cover it and pop it into the fridge. Then simply bake it when you need it.

If it is very cold from the fridge, give it a little extra time in the oven.

Leftovers are also excellent the next day, which I think is always worth knowing.

I’d serve this with a simple green salad or some dressed rocket alongside. Nothing complicated. The pasta bake is generous enough on its own.

Recipes like this are also the kind of food I love sharing in the Relish Mama Cooking Club — recipes that are approachable, full of flavour and useful enough that you’ll hopefully want to cook them more than once.

Because I think that matters.

We all collect plenty of recipes.

The really good ones are the recipes that actually become part of how we cook.

I hope this Tuna Pasta Bake with Tomato and Lemon Ricotta becomes one of those for you.

It is simple, comforting and very delicious.

And those lemon ricotta pockets are particularly good.