Skip to main content

Baked Ziti with Vegetable Sauce

So many individual components of this dish are just delicious on their own, making the mastery of this recipe a versatile trick for your kitchen. The tomato sauce is great! The cheese mix is very good! Putting them together is happiness. Consider variations -- adding some blue cheese to the mix. Swirling all the ingredients together, rather than layering like a lasagna. Maybe some nutmeg or cinnamon in the sauce. It's all good, when it comes to mac-n-cheese.

I'll be honest. The below, original version uses a lot a lot of cheese. I was a little worried-slash-giddy when I started putting it all together. It's delicious, but I think you could easily lower the amount of cheese by 1/3 or even by half.

Baked Ziti with Vegetable Sauce
American Masala


Sauce:
1/4 c olive oil
3 dried red peppers (or, 1/2 tsp red pepper flakes)
1/2 tsp pepper
1/2 tsp rosemary, chopped
1/2 tsp thyme, chopped
1 red onion, halved and thinly sliced
1 T coarse salt
2 red bell peppers, thinly sliced
1 T sugar
3 c canned crushed tomatoes
1 c water

Ziti:
1 lb ziti (or whatever cheese-holding pasta you have on hand)
8 oz mozzarella cheese, coarsely grated
4 oz Pecorino Romano, coarsely grated
1 lb ricotta cheese
3 eggs
1 c basil, chopped
2 T unsalted butter, melted

2 T unsalted butter
1/2 tsp coarse salt
1/2 tsp pepper

Preheat oven to 400. Grease a 9x13" baking pan with 1 tsp oil and set aside.

To make the sauce, heat oil, chiles (or red pepper flakes) and pepper in a large pot over medium heat. Cook 1 1/2 minutes. Add rosemary and thyme and cook 14 seconds.

Add onion and salt and cook 4 minutes.

Lower heat and add bell peppers; cook until they start to soften, about 3 minutes.

Mix in sugar and reduce the heat even more; cover the pot and cook 5 minutes, stirring halfway through. Add tomatoes and bring to a boil. Add 1 c water and return to a boil. Reduce heat to medium and partially cover. Simmer 20 minutes. Turn off heat and set aside. (At this point, the sauce can be refrigerated for 3 days, or frozen for 3 months.)

To make the ziti, mix a quarter of the mozzarella, half of the Parmesan, all of the Pecorino, ricotta, eggs, basil, melted butter, salt and pepper in a large bowl. In a separate bowl, mix remaining mozzarella and remaining Paremsan together.

Bring a large stock pot of salted water to a boil. Cook pasta until al dente. Drain and add to the vegetable sauce, along with 2 T butter. Warm over medium heat and cook until you can hear the sauce simmering, about 2 minutes. Turn off heat.

Add a third of the pasta to the baking dish.

Divide ricotta mixture into two equal portions and break chunks off of one portion; dot over the pasta. (If the temperature is right, you can simply smooth on top of the noodles using a spatula.)
 
Cover with another third of the pasta and dot with remaining ricotta. Spread the rest of the pasta on top and sprinkle with the mozzarella-Parmesan mixture.

Bake 20 minutes. Broil about 6" from heating element for 2-3 minutes to finish. Let stand 5 minutes before serving.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Cauliflower and Arugula Soup with Tibetan Flatbread

Because the weather is chilly, and because I had a bag of arugula from the last farm box taunting me, only to be compounded by a fresh bag of arugula from the recent farm box, I decided to try this soup I found from a blog associated with a California-based CSA, Eat Outside the Box . Cauliflower and Arugula Soup Eat Outside the Box farm blog 1 head cauliflower 1 red or white onion, peeled and chopped 3/4 lb zucchini, peeled and chopped 1/4 lb arugula 15 oz stock 15 oz water 1 T olive oil salt and pepper Parmesan cheese, grated First, let me state how important it is to wash your arugula before using it. I don't know about you, but sometimes I get lazy and rely on the "well, if it doesn't kill me, it'll just make me stronger" approach to washing my foods and vegetables. This laziness is only enhanced when the food I'm considering has come from an organic farm. But leaving aside all the various things that can get on the food

Mayocoba Beans with Green Chiles

I love this dish so much that I can barely stand it. Delicious the night it was made, and fantastic as leftovers throughout the week. Mayocoba beans are easily replaced -- try pintos, if you can't find mayocobas. Mayocoba Beans with Green Chiles Baptism of Fire 3-4 green chiles, roasted and chopped 1 onion, chopped 1 clove garlic, minced 1 T lard or olive oil 1/2 tsp oregano 1 tsp cumin pepper 1 c mayocoba beans, dry 3 c water 1 tsp salt Cook the green chiles, onion, garlic, oregano, cumin, and black pepper in the fat until the onions begin to caramelize. Add the water and bring to a boil. Turn off the heat and let the beans sit, uncovered, for an hour. You may drain the water to remove some of the slightly indigestible sugars that cause gassiness. If you decide to drain them, add enough water back into the pot to cover the beans with about 2" of water above the beans for cooking.  Bring the beans back to a boil and cook, until tender. This will take

Chilled Soba Noodles with Cucumber, Snow Peas, and Radishes

  We destroyed these. In a good way. It's a lovely-to-look-at dish, chock full of vegetables. More so than I had anticipated, and more so than most soba noodle dishes I've made in the past. We absolutely gobbled this up! Served here with a five-spice chicken and smashed cucumbers.  The original calls for nori. We don't love nori so left it out. Maybe we are missing a part of the experience, but even without it, this was delicious.  Chilled Soba Noodles with Cucumber, Snow Peas, and Radishes Cook's Illustrated 8 oz soba noodles 3 T white miso paste 3 T mirin 2 T toasted sesame oil 1 T sesame seeds 1 tsp ginger, grated 1/4 tsp red pepper flakes 1/3 English cucumber, quartered lengthwise, seeded, sliced thin 4 oz snow peas, strings removed, cut lengthwise into matchsticks 4 radishes, trimmed, halved, sliced thin into half-moons 3 scallions, sliced thin Bring 4 quarts water to boil in large pot. Stir in noodles and cook according to package directions, stirring occasionally