Baked Ziti

This recipe is one of my favorites! I’ve had this for a long time…so long that I can’t even remember where I got it. I discovered this recipe back when I first started cooking….up until this time if I wanted an Italian type meal, I usually made spaghetti, which I do love but sometimes you want just a little bit more. I was happy that this was so easy….everything could be purchased already prepared. A jar of sauce, a bag of shredded mozzarella and that green can of Parmesan…..I knew how to cook pasta, and the Ricotta just needed to be removed from the carton. Easy, easy, easy…I loved it! Not only was it easy, it was good and it was good enough to impress dinner guests too.

Many years have passed and my cooking skills have improved but I still go back to this recipe. Now, I usually make my own sauce, add either Italian sausage or ground beef, shred my own mozzarella and use freshly grated Parmesan Reggiano. But when pressed for time or when I just don’t feel like putting too much energy into dinner, I will use a jar of sauce and doctor it up a bit and buy pre-shredded mozzarella, although I still insist on using freshly grated Parm. In other words this recipe can be used no matter where you stand with your cooking skills….from novice to someone who has cooked for years.

Baked Ziti
Print Recipe

1/2 pound ziti pasta (or other small pasta)
1 container ricotta cheese (15 oz.)
3 cups shredded mozzarella cheese (12 oz.) divided
3 cups spaghetti sauce, divided
1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese
1 pound Italian Sausage, browned (not in original recipe..see Notes)

Preheat the oven to 350 . In a large pot of boiling salted water, cook the ziti until just barely tender; drain and place in a large bowl. Mix the ricotta cheese and half of the mozzarella cheese with the ziti. Grease a 9x13 baking pan; cover the bottom of pan with half the spaghetti sauce. Spoon the ziti mixture into the pan; cover with the remaining spaghetti sauce. Sprinkle with the Parmesan cheese and top with the remaining mozzarella cheese. Bake for 20 to 30 minutes or until cheese melts and is slightly golden.

Notes: This recipe calls for store bought sauce but I'll sometimes use my own homemade. When I use sauce from a jar I'll sometimes use it straight from the jar but usually will doctor it up...for my blog post, I browned 1 pound of Italian Sausage while I prepared the rest of the recipe. The way I make it is determined by how much time I how much time I want to spend cooking.
 

  In case you don't know what ziti looks like. This is a one pound box so I used half.

Cook ziti....undercook it a little because it will cook a little more while in the oven. Drain and place in a large bowl.

Since I was adding Italian sausage, I browned it before putting together the other ingredients.

This is one of my favorite prepared sauces. Choose whatever you like...use it straight from the jar or add other ingredients and/or spices or you can even use your own homemade sauce. Just use whatever you like or what is easiest for you.

I added the sauce to the Italian sausage and let it simmer while preparing the other ingredients. If you are using sauce straight from the jar, it doesn't need to be heated.

Mix together ziti, grated mozzarella and Ricotta.

Place half of the sauce in the bottom of a 9x13 dish.

Add ziti, cheese mixture on top of the sauce.

Add remaining sauce.

Next, I added the mozzarella cheese on top of the sauce then looked around and noticed that my Parmesan cheese was still sitting on the counter. It should have been added before the mozzarella.....Ooops! Sometimes cooking and taking pictures at the same time is a little much for me and I'll miss a step from time to time.

The missing Parmesan.

So, I added the Parmesan last. That's what I like about cooking....some things don't have to be done in the exact order and the dish will still be good.

Thirty minutes later.......

I let it rest for about 10 minutes and then we dug in.  Add some bread and a salad and there you have it, an easy and good meal.

Lasagna, Lasagne….you say tomayto, I say tomaato

How do you spell it? I’ve seen it written both ways but my Word spell check suggests lasagna and since I can't stand those little red lines showing up under the words in my sentences, I'll spell it ending with an "a".

What can I say about this wonderful food? Nothing except that it is one of my favorite things to eat and that I could probably eat it every day and whenever I go to an Italian restaurant, this is always my first choice. I’ll vary from time to time but always go back to lasagna. 

I can't even remember the first time I had lasagna. I grew up in a meat and potatoes home in the Midwest...not much experience with any other types of food. We did occasionally order pizza, or my older brother would make the boxed Chef Boyardee pizza mix.....or, when he started working at a local pizza place, would bring home dough, sauce and other ingredients and he would make pizza for us. He had even learned to toss the dough...I was impressed...of course, I was quite young at the time and impressed easily. We also had spaghetti, either canned Franco American or the boxed Kraft Spaghetti and Meat Sauce, in the red box. As you can see, my ethnic food experience was basically, non existent. I was probably in my 20's when I first had lasagna and I imagine I probably had it at Pizza Hut. Actually, while I was in my 20's, I also started eating Mexican and Chinese as well. 

Detour over....back to lasagna....My lasagna recipe started out with one that I found in Betty Crocker's International Cookbook, published sometime in the 80's. The recipe from that cookbook served me well for many years, then I started tinkering with it…combining different ideas and techniques that I picked up from other recipes or articles that I’ve read or what I’ve seen on cooking shows, so it has changed a good bit over time and now barely resembles the original.

Before I started on the lasagna, I typed up what I hoped was the final draft of my recipe and since my computer isn’t hooked up to Michael’s printer, I emailed it to him and asked him to print it off for me. I wanted a hard copy so I could make notes or corrections, if needed. As I was reading over the printed recipe, I came across a sentence that I didn't remember typing….apparently there are gremlins at work here…..“Serve to Michael, but stay out of his way, as he stampedes to consume the whole pan!!!!!!!” Funny guy!

Mix 1/4 cup white wine with sausage. I read somewhere that this will keep the sausage from cooking up into lumps.

Saute onions in olive oil.

Saute red pepper flakes and garlic.

Add sausage and brown. Adding the wine to the sausage did keep it from cooking up into lumps....in the past it almost looked like I had little meatballs in my sauce.

Stir in tomatoes, parsley, sugar, salt, basil, oregano and pepper. Cover and simmer for at leat 20 minutes.

Combine eggs, ricotta, 3 cups mozzarella and Parmesan.

Spread sauce in bottom of pan.

Place four lasagna noodles over the sauce, slightly overlapping.

Spread half of the cheese mixture over the noodles. 

Cover with 1 1/2 cups sauce.  Repeat layers.

Sprinkle with remaining mozzarella cheese.

Bake according to instructions, let rest and enjoy.

Michael  "the takeout king" thought I was going to entirely too much trouble to make lasagna...he thinks Stouffers makes a good one. Once he tasted it, he did change his mind....he exclaimed that, "It was the best lasagna I've ever eaten." I'm not sure if he really believes that or is afraid if he doesn't say it that I'll stop cooking.....

Print Italian Sausage Lasagna Recipe

Mom's Meatloaf - Take Two

Meatloaf is one of my favorite foods…to me it says comfort as much, if not more, than pot roast. I don’t believe I’ve ever met a meatloaf that I didn’t like, some I’ve liked better than others, but still think my mom’s was the best.

Mom didn’t have a recipe for her meatloaf, she may have at one time but by the time I remember watching and helping her make this, she didn’t use one. So I took what I could remember, along with some recipes that I found on the internet and came up with one that is very close to hers. I still don’t think it tastes quite like hers, but I’m in the ball park.

One of my first blog posts was about Mom’s meatloaf recipe…back then all I did was post the recipe along with a picture (my first didn’t even have a picture). Below is the recipe along with a few revisions.

Print Recipe
1 pound lean ground beef
1 pound ground pork sausage
½  cup onion, chopped
2 eggs
1/2 cup saltine crackers (approx. 1/2 sleeve) crushed
1 can tomato soup

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F
Sauté onion until soft
Combine beef, pork sausage, onion, eggs, tomato soup and crackers and mix well
Place in 9x5 loaf pan or a baking pan and shape into a loaf
Bake for 45 minutes - 1 1/2 hours. Internal temperature should reach 160 degrees F.
Remove from oven and let rest for at least 15 minutes before slicing

Mom didn't measure out the crackers....she just used a package or two from the box. Back then, the crackers didn't come in a sleeve like they do now, so I'm not really sure how much she used. A food processor or rolling pin can be used to crush the crackers, but since I was cooking at Michael's I had neither, so used a bottle of garlic oil.

I place butter in a frying pan and then saute the onions ....Mom never did this, she just chopped the onions and placed them in the meatloaf mixture. This may be one of the reasons our meatloaf doesn't taste exactly the same.

Place all the ingredients in a large bowl and mix well. This is where my mom let me help…mixing the meatloaf. I had to put my hands in the bowl and squish it through my fingers. I didn't care for it then and I don't like it now. I usually use my Kitchen Aid stand mixer for this process…use the dough hook, set the mixer on 1 and it does a fine job. Since I was at Michael’s, I was forced to use my hands….yuck! Did I already tell you that I hate this part?

I normally use a large loaf pan but since I had made an unplanned trip to Michael's, I didn't pack my loaf pan, so just used a 9x13 pan and tried to shape it into a loaf. It is kind of loafish...... Now that this is done, I can wash my hands....yeah!

Ok....I do like ketchup....mom used it to top her meatloaf and so do I....I also spread some on my serving when getting ready to eat.

Michael couldn't wait to cut into the meatloaf.

Normally Michael doesn't get it when I take pictures of my food, but this time he actually brought his plate back into the kitchen and asked me to take a photo. He said, "Here take a picture of my plate so they can see it." It does look better than mine...especially since he put more cheese on the garlic and cheddar mashed potatoes and his ketchup was already on his plate. By the way, this was his first serving...he went back for seconds.

Pasta with Pumpkin and Sausage

This is a recipe I discovered while looking for something to prepare for the BakeSpace Challenge for October. We were supposed to prepare something made from local produce that is in season for October. Being from SW Ohio, finding a variety of local produce this time of year is a challenge in itself…I knew we had apples and pumpkins but wasn’t sure what else. Danielle (Cooking for My Piece of Mind and another BakeSpace regular) found a link to NRDC....Eat Local which contained lists of seasonal produce for different parts of the country. Well, unfortunately, there isn’t a lot to choose from this time of the year….in my opinion. I’m not a fan of cruciferous vegetables (broccoli, cauliflower and cabbage), and that is what is available, along with peppers (I like them a little but not enough to use as a main ingredient), along with the before mentioned apples and pumpkin.

I decided to try to find something using apples and/or pumpkin, but didn’t want to use them in a way that I normally do….cookies, pie, cake, candy, muffins, etc. I wanted to try something different….savory instead of sweet. While searching for a recipe, I received the Food Network Newsletter in my email and it contained links to pumpkin recipes. I found several pumpkin pasta recipes and decided on this Rachel Ray recipe.

Pasta with Pumpkin and Sausage
Print Recipe
1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil -- plus 1 tablespoon
1 pound bulk sweet Italian sausage
4 cloves garlic -- cracked and chopped
1 medium onion -- finely chopped
1 bay leaf -- fresh or dried
4 sprigs sage leaves -- cut into chiffonade, about 2 tablespoons (4 to 6)
1 cup dry white wine
1 cup chicken stock
1 cup pumpkin
1/2 cup heavy cream
1/8 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg -- ground or freshly grated
Coarse salt and black pepper
1 pound penne -- cooked to al dente
Romano or Parmigiano -- for grating

Heat a large, deep nonstick skillet over medium high heat. Add 1 tablespoon of olive oil to the pan and brown the sausage in it. Transfer sausage to paper towel lined plate. Drain fat from skillet and return pan to the stove. Add the remaining tablespoon oil, and then the garlic and onion. Sauté 3 to 5 minutes until the onions are tender.

Add bay leaf, sage, and wine to the pan. Reduce wine by half, about 2 minutes. Add stock and pumpkin and stir to combine, stirring sauce until it comes to a bubble. Return sausage to pan, reduce heat, and stir in cream. Season the sauce with the cinnamon and nutmeg, and salt and pepper, to taste. Simmer mixture 5 to 10 minutes to thicken sauce.

Return drained pasta to the pot you cooked it in. Remove the bay leaf from sauce and pour the sausage pumpkin sauce over pasta. Combine sauce and pasta and toss over low heat for 1 minute. Garnish the pasta with lots of shaved cheese and sage leaves.

Brown sausage

Onions and garlic

Bay Leaf, Sage and Wine

Add Pumpkin and Broth

Add Sausage, seasonings and cream

I served this with a whole grain pasta...I felt the pumpkin would go well with it.

I have to admit that I was a little concerned about this recipe. Never having pumpkin as a savory dish, I wasn't sure I would even like it...but I did. Michael wasn't quite as impressed...kept referring to it as hamburger helper....hmmmm. I think he really would have preferred a red sauce instead.

I will make this again, but maybe not when Michael is around.