Pasta Bake - White Sauce

My son's favorite food is pasta. we make red sauce, white sauce, no sauce, spaghetti, bow ties, and my son considers all of the above as a variety of foods. It's sent in lunch boxes at least once a week. The preferred kind for lunch box is cooked pasta sauteed in oilve oil with carmalized onions, colored peppers and Italian seasoning. Yep, my son is a foodie, so I call sauteed onions as carmalized. That's our make believe world where I am the chef and he gets his gourmet lunches and dinners.

Not just him, every time the kids come over for playing, pasta is all they need. I bake these and they think I toiled in the kitchen for ever to make scrumptious food. Here is the recipe I use for white sauce. Can't claim it's mine. I am sure this is how half the world makes it. If I recall it right, the first time I made this recipe it was an adaptation of Nigella Lawson's Mushroom Pasta Bake recipe. I use 1% milk and it turns out creamy enough. Never felt the need to make to creamier or fattier.

Ingredients

White Sauce

2 Tsp Flour
1 Cup Milk
2 tsp butter or olive oil
1/4 cup Mushrooms ... Optional
1/4 tsp Italian seasoning or dried oregano leaves
1/4 tsp freshly ground red chilli powder in a nut grinder and should look in between chilli powder and chilli flakes. You can skip this and simply add pepper powder. Again preferably freshly ground.

1/2 Packet Pasta any kind preferably thicker the better if you plan to bake it.

Method

1. Cook the pasta as per the instructions. Make sure that it is not cooked all the way as the baking will cook it a little further. Leave it on a sieve covered with a wet paper towel to keep  the top layer from drying off.
2. Heat a tsp of butter or olive oil
3. Add ground pepper powder and/or Italian seasoning and chilli flakes
4. Saute mushrooms if you are using it.
5. Simmer the heat and add a teaspoon of flour. Keep mixing it with a ladle.
6. Add the milk and mix well to avoid lumps. The mixture will thicken in a few minutes.
7. Add a pinch of salt.

Mix the pasta with the sauce and bake it for 30 minutes in a 350 degree oven.