Baked Scallop Rigatoni in White Sauce

Serves 3-4

This is by far the most ambitious thing I've ever tried.  It is the first time I have ever used all four of my oven burners at the same time.  As per my M.O., I will give you the recipe as I did it and tell you what I learned at the end.

Ingredients

2 tsp virgin olive oil

110 gm scallops (defrosted)

½ cup sliced mushrooms

½ cup chopped onion (I used Walla Walla sweet onion)

2 slices turkey bacon (cooked and crumbled)

3 tbsp butter

3 tbsp flour

1 cup 1% milk

¾ tsp basil

¾ tsp dillweed

½ tsp salt

255 gm uncooked rigatoni

60 gm shredded partly skim mozzarella cheese

Directions

Preheat oven to 400 degrees

White Sauce:

In a small saucepan over low heat, melt butter. Add milk

Add dillweed, basil and salt. Stir to mix.

Slowly add flour, stirring all the time to mix.

Continue cooking over low heat, stirring frequently until sauce is smooth and thickened.

Scallops:

In an skillet (or similar), heat oil over medium-high heat

Add onions and cook, stirring, for three minutes

Add scallops and continue cooking for two minutes

Add mushrooms and continue cooking for one minute or until mushrooms are cooked

Remove from heat and add bacon. Stir to mix

Rigatoni:

Cook according to package directions and drain

Bake:

In a large mixing bowl, combine rigatoni, sauce and scallop mixture. Mix well

Pour mix into a 7 cup baking dish

Top with the shredded cheese

Bake for 20 minutes or until cheese is golden brown

What I learned:

1. White sauce takes a long time to thicken and cook.  It would be a good idea to just make it first and then do all of the other stuff after.  Having four burners going at once was a bit overwhelming.
2. This recipe doesn't need the scallops to be good.  But I like the flavour of scallops so I will keep using them.  But the recipe needs more of them.  They are overpowered by everything else.  So I would use about 1.5 times as many next time.
3. There's too many onions in the recipe.  I would probably cut it down to about 1/4 or 1/3 cup of onions.
4. If you do not want to bake it, you wouldn't have to.  You could just pour the sauce with the scallop mix on cooked pasta and that would work.
5. While my white sauce recipe works, it is a bit bland.  I'll have to play with the seasonings and see what works.  It also has a bit too much of a flour taste.  If anyone can tell me how to get rid of that, I would be in your debt.
6. There is a lot of rigatoni (3x the portion size on the package).  Cutting that to about 200 grams would probably work too.