If I had a dollar for every time someone asked me a question about Italian cooking, I wouldn't be worried about recipes, because I'd be eating out every night. From what I can gather, non-Italians think we Italians have a magical/mythical ability to make edible masterpieces from pasta, cheese, garlic, tomato sauce and a few other ingredients. That happens to be true, but you non-Italians can learn some of our God-given culinary skills.
From time to time I will include some of my Italian recipes, but we'll have to work up to the really good stuff. To begin building up, we'll start with a classically delicious recipe that is very easy to make: Baked ziti. Master this to build confidence in your culinary skills by creating something everybody likes. Seriously, everybody likes baked ziti, right? If you don't, well, I'm not sure I wanna know you.
Anyway... here's what you'll need:
1 lb box of ziti
1 jar tomato sauce of your choice (more if you're like me and like more sauce)
1 lb ricotta cheese
2 cups shredded mozzarella/Italian cheese mix divided
You'll never see a simpler list of ingredients for something so good! Start off by bringing a pot of water to a boil and stir in the ziti. Cook it a little less than what you normally like for pasta, because you're gonna cook it again. Drain the ziti and put it back in the pot.
Italian cooking secret #1: When making pasta, as soon as you cook and drain it, return it to the pot and stir in some sauce. This helps keep the noodles from sticking together.
In this case, go ahead and dump the whole jar of sauce in and stir it all up. Then add in the ricotta and mix thoroughly.
Italian cooking secret #2: Use ricotta. If you ever see an Italian recipe that calls for cottage cheese, replace it with ricotta. For some reason, perhaps because of availability or likely for cost, a lot of people like to substitute cottage cheese for ricotta. This is ridiculous. They are NOT the same. To begin with, cottage cheese is nasty. Even if you like it, you must understand there is a very significant culinary difference between cottage cheese and ricotta, and that is that cottage cheese has way more whey. Whey, of course, is the liquid. Ricotta, though it has some whey, is far more curd (solid). In fact, it should be pretty firmly packed. It also tastes better and is meant for Italian cooking. So reject all notion of cottage cheese.
OK. Back to the recipe. To the ziti, sauce, ricotta mix add about 1.5 cups of the shredded cheese and mix.
Italian cooking secret #3: Want to add a little more flavor to your Italian recipes? When a recipe, including pizza, calls for mozzarella or an Italian cheese mix, try substituting in some cheddar or other mix. When I made my most recent batch of baked ziti, I had some Mexican mix in the fridge and added that in. It just adds a little sharpness to the flavor.
So now you have your ziti mix. You can stop here as far as your mix, but you don't have to. I like to add in some Italian herbs (e.g. oregano, basil). Feel free to add in other ingredients you may enjoy, like mushroom or other veggies, Italian sausage, ground beef, meatballs, etc. I seem to remember my cousin's husband making baked ziti once with pepperoni slices and other meat mixed in. It was great. It's part of what makes this recipe so versatile.
Whatever you've mixed in, spread it into a large baking dish sprayed with cooking spray (makes clean-up MUCH easier). Top with the remaining cheese (and maybe some more herbs). Bake in a preheated 350-degree oven for about 30 minutes or until it's all bubbly and cooked through and the top starts to brown. If the top browns too quickly, tent with foil.
Like I said in the ingredients, if you're like me, you'll want more sauce. I LOVE sauce, so I always make another jar to top it all off. In the picture above you'll see I added some (store-bought) meatballs. This meal goes great with a salad and some garlic bread.Ziti: Italian for "share"
OK. That's not true at all, but it might as well mean to share, because this is such an easy meal to do just that. Often when I make baked ziti, I make two batches, because other than the minimal time it takes to heat a little more water than for a single batch, there's no added prep time. The second batch (which you do not bake) I either put in the freezer for another day, or share it with someone else. You just defrost and bake it.
I put a batch away before our son was born, along with some other pre-made meals, so we wouldn't have to worry about cooking in those early days of parental exhaustion. I love to make it for other new parents, too, because it's easy on both ends, and like I said earlier, everyone likes it. Want proof? We just took over a batch to friends who had their second child last week. Their almost three-year-old loved it, telling his parents, "Mr. Kevin is a good cooker!"
His dad said they finally stopped him after three plates. MANGIA!
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