Wednesday, August 20, 2008

Baked Ziti

Well, the husband is home from his trip back east. He had commented before he left that we hadn't had my mom's Cheese Bread recipe in a long time and would like it when he got back. He was supposed to get home tomorrow night, but I did a little rearranging and we're having it tonight. I had some ricotta in the fridge I needed to use up, so I thought Baked Ziti would be perfect with the Cheese Bread. The Cheese Bread recipe, by the way, will be in a separate post after I finish this one.

This Baked Ziti recipe is from the same person as the Eggplant Parmesan I made a couple weeks ago, so I have pretty high hopes. Plus I love cheesy, tomato-ey pasta dishes! Yum!

Baked Ziti
1 box ziti pasta
Spaghetti sauce
1 container ricotta cheese
1 egg, beaten
2 bags mozzarella cheese
2 handfuls parmesan cheese

Boil pasta until it's al dente. Mix beaten egg and 1 handful of parmesan into ricotta cheese. Drain pasta and add back to wherever you plan to mix everything (like the pot the pasta was boiled in). Mix in sauce, ricotta cheese, half the mozzarella, and another handful of parmesan. Add some sauce to the bottom of the pan, then dump in the pasta mixture. Bake at 350 until bubbling. You could use less mozarella than called for and the spaghetti sauce can be with or without meat.

*****

I need a little more structure in cooking time, so I looked up another Baked Ziti recipe, and it said to bake at 375 for 45 minutes, so I'm going with that. I'll probably check it after 30 minutes and see how it's doing.

I only have half a container of ricotta, so I'm substituting cottage cheese for the other half. I was going to get more ricotta, but cottage cheese was on sale, ricotta wasn't, and I'm cheap. And I'm using the leftover spaghetti sauce I made for the Eggplant Parmesan.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

This sounds really good. I am eager to hear how good, since it was from the eggplant parm person. I went back to look at the eggplant pics, and it was like food porn!