I was at the local Twickenham Farmers’ Market last Saturday and saw a ‘Seriously Italian’ stall selling fresh pasta. I’ve bought their pasta before and it truly is ‘seriously good’ as well as ‘seriously Italian’. There were a few interesting filled pasta choices but in the end – after consultation with Jonathan – I went for ravioli filled with roasted beetroot.

I thought I’d probably use them soon but just in case I didn’t, I popped them in the freezer so I could keep them for a while. Today I decided to make a pasta bake with them. It’s feeling quite wintry now with darkness falling around 4.30 – even though it’s unusually mild for the time of year – so a pasta bake seemed a perfect, comforting supper. I thought about what to put with it and remembered making summery beetroot salads with goats’ cheese and walnuts and decided there was no reason not to take the same flavours into my more wintry dish.

There was no weight on the packs but each had 14 ‘units’ of ravioli. I cooked them according to instructions – 3 minutes in salted boiling water – and drained. Then I made a béchamel sauce with 50g butter, 50g flour and almost a pint of milk. I added seasoning and a good grating of nutmeg – partly as I like this in a béchamel sauce but also because the ravioli had some nutmeg seasoning in them and it was nice to pick this up in the sauce.

I put the drained ravioli in an ovenproof dish and poured over the béchamel sauce. I cut a thick slice of goats’ cheese into pieces and dotted over the top of the sauce.

Roughly chop 30g walnuts and sprinkle over the top. Then add a good grating of Parmesan. Put into a 200C/180 Fan/Gas 6 oven for 30-40 minutes until bubbling and nicely browned on top.

Serve with a green salad on the side.

This was so different to my usual pasta bake of béchamel and tomato sauce. A little more sophisticated, I think! Whatever … Jonathan judged it wonderful and it was a great success for supper. It was a fabulous combination of flavours and I liked the crunchy texture of the walnuts with the creamy sauce.