ångel food

A few years ago, we went on a Sopranos-watching spree. On several occasions, someone would bring out a dish of baked ziti. Neither of us had really ever tried a baked pasta dish before, and so we were intrigued. The Ronzoni brand ziti I found in our grocery store had a simple recipe on the back of the box. Over the years I’ve continued to alter it, and here is the recipe in its current form.

Baked Ziti

This general recipe works well for a variety of medium-sized, ridged, tubular pasta types — rigatoncini and ziti rigati are the two we’ve tried. Penne rigati might be a bit small for this recipe. Ridged pasta does a better job of holding the sauce on the noodles, which is nice in this recipe.

You can omit the ricotta if you prefer and substitute in extra mozzarella. If you do this, try to use whole milk mozzarella instead of part-skim.

This recipe will serve two, but it can easily be scaled to feed any number of people. Baking time doesn’t need to be adjusted, just quantities.

Click here to view Baked Ziti pictures »

4 oz	ziti rigati or similar ridged pasta
1⁄4 lb	ground Italian sausage
1⁄2 jar	spaghetti sauce (13 oz, about 1 1⁄2 cups)
4 oz	shredded low-moisture mozzarella (about 1 cup)
1⁄4 cup	ricotta (4 tablespoons)
	grated Parmigiano Reggiano and Pecorino Romano
	Italian seasoning

Directions:

1. Adjust an oven rack to the middle position and preheat the oven to 350°F.
2. For the pasta: Cook the pasta according to the directions on the box. Begin boiling water for the pasta when you start browning the meat for the sauce. Cook the pasta as soon as the water begins to boil.
3. For the sauce: Heat a large saucier or sauce pan over medium heat. (If using chicken sausage, you’ll need to add a small amount of oil; pork sausage has enough fat to brown on its own in a non-stick pan.) Add the sausage and cook until just starting to brown, breaking it into small chunks. You shouldn’t need to drain the sausage after cooking if you don’t add oil. After cooking the sausage, pour in the sauce and stir to combine, reducing the heat to low. Continue to simmer the sauce while the pasta cooks.
4. Drain the pasta and add to the sauce, stirring to evenly distribute the pasta with the sauce mixture. Pour half of the pasta and sauce into a small, round casserole dish. Spoon four tablespoons of ricotta cheese on top, then cover with mozzarella. Sprinkle Italian seasoning on top of the cheese, then cover with the remaining pasta mixture. Top with remaining mozzarella, some grated Parmigiano and Romano cheeses, and more Italian seasoning. Cover dish with a lid or aluminum foil.
5. Bake pasta for 25 minutes. Remove cover and bake for another 5 minutes until hot and bubbly. Serve immediately with extra grated cheese on top.

(Note: I tend to like my pasta sauces thin and lots of sauce on my pastas; Ragú’s Traditional Old World Style is my preferred store-bought sauce. I don’t think this recipe is soupy, but other people may disagree. I’ve actually cut the amount of sauce in half from what I originally used, believe it or not.)

Make-Ahead: The pasta can be assembled ahead of time and stored, ready to bake, in the refrigerator for a few days. If you want to keep it longer than that, put it in the freezer and allow to thaw before sticking in the oven.

Leftovers: This pasta reheats well if you have leftovers; just be sure to reheat only what you plan to use instead of the entire dish.

Scalable: In order to adjust this recipe, which is meant to feed two, simply divide all quantities by 2 and then multiply by the number of people it is meant to serve.

• Quick-and-easy side dish: The final five minutes of uncovered cooking time is the perfect opportunity to put in a loaf of bread to warm up alongside the pasta. We’re rather fond of La Brea’s demi baguettes and sliced pugliese, which we can pick up at Costco.
• Measuring uncooked pasta: Two ounces is the recommended serving size for pasta as a main course. It doesn’t look like all that much when you’re cooking it, but the cheese and sauce in this recipe really add a lot. I generally make three ounces of pasta per serving, but for this recipe two is plenty. If you have a larger appetite, increase to about 3 ounces per person. Use a digital food scale to make sure you measure out the right amount.
• Using sausage links instead of ground meat: I buy uncooked hot Italian sausage links and remove the casing before browning them like regular ground sausage; each link should be about ¼ pound. Remove the casing before cooking and break up the links as you would with a loose ground meat. You can use ground Italian sausage of any variety.
• Ricotta-less alternative: If you don’t like ricotta cheese, you can substitute extra mozzarella cheese instead; just be sure to be generous or the pasta will end up dry and not very cheesy. Since my husband doesn’t eat ricotta but I do, I break an uncooked lasagna noodle down to fit across the diameter of my baking dish. It splits the dish into two equal parts and keeps the ricotta from leaking over onto his side.
• Shred your own cheeses: Unless you’re pressed for time, get a chunk of mozzarella and shred it yourself. Pre-shredded cheeses tend to be coated to keep the pieces from sticking together in the bag. OXO’s Box Grater comes with a small container that you can insert into the bottom to catch the mozzarella as you shred it.
• Be choosy about your cheese: Whole-milk mozzarella results in a creamier dish compared to part-skim or low-fat mozzarella, and this is particularly noticeable if omitting the ricotta. Be sure to get real Italian Parmigiano Reggiano and Pecorino Romano instead of the cans of pre-grated Parmesan and Romano. It may seem expensive, but you have to consider how much use you’ll get out of a block, and the flavor is more than worth the price; our Costco sells them at a much more reasonable price than our local grocery store. The Microplane Zester/Grater is a handy tool to have for grating hard cheeses.
• Avoid baking dishes with sharp corners: Use a round casserole dish or at least a baking dish with rounded corners. It really does cut down on crunchy corner noodles. (I believe Alton Brown talks about this trick in his episode about casseroles.) I use a 1.5-quart CorningWare round dish to cook two servings.

Tags: Free Recipe, Leftovers, Low Difficulty, Make-Ahead, Scalable

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 14th, 2008 at 9:20 pm and is filed under Main Dish, Pasta. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.