I started off looking in my freezer for something to have for my tea (dinner). Nothing really jumped out so I asked my mum what she wanted, then looked on a random name generator for food names. This all lead to lasagne being the plan… until I found out we had no pasta sheets or lasagne sauces.

What do we have? I asked myself as I burrowed through a cupboard batting tins aside. A pasta bake sauce and some normal pasta. Pork mince in the freezer. Got the mince out to defrost in cold water and waited.

A few hours later when the mince had defrosted I put some pasta on to boil. I then started frying the mince. When both the pasta and meat looked cooked I put the mince into an oven proof dish and coated it in the pasta bake sauce with a good stir. Next I poured the pasta on top and spread it evenly across the dish, then topped it off with a bag of pre-grated cheese. When I was ready to eat I gave the creation twenty minutes in the oven.

It wasn’t lasagne but it was as close as I could get with my improvised ingredients. It’s easy to cook with the right ingredients but improvised ingredients can produce interesting combinations for meals. I got a Porkstabake (might have to work on the name). It was surprisingly nice.

Pork mince with a tomato sauce seemed like a good idea but if I’d have had lamb or beef I think a cheese sauce would have been better.