Rich Folks Pasta

After more than a month of radio silence, I'm back with a great recipe I collected a while back but never had the courage to try.  It was much easier than I expected, and wow - the payoff was awesome.  This is a great pasta recipe for a dinner party, pot luck or just the family with lots of yummy leftovers.

The original title of the recipe as I received it from an old friend was "Sausage Pasta With Tomatoes & Spinach."  Hmm - boring.  I named it more for how it tastes - rich.

Ingredients:
1 lb sweet Italian sausage (casing removed).  You can get your grocery store meat counter to do this, or you can snip the end and slice the side of a sausage and squeeze it out.
1 medium onion
3 large garlic cloves
1 28 oz can iced whole tomatoes
1/4 prepared pesto sauce
10 oz rigatoni or penne
1 c. Romano cheese
8 c. spinach leaves (2/3 of 10 oz package)
6 oz mozzarella cheese - chopped
6 oz mozzarella cheese - shred
1 pint heavy whipping cream

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.  Cook pasta to "al dente" (not too long or it will be mushy after baking).
In a large saucepan, brown onion, sausage and garlic about 10 minutes.  Add tomatoes with juices.  Simmer until thicker - about 10 minutes.  Stir in pesto and cream and season with salt and pepper to taste.

Oil a 9 x 13" baking dish.  Mixed cooked pasta, raw spinach, chopped mozzarella and 1/3 cup Romano cheese.  Stir in the hot sauce.  Mix and transfer to baking dish.  Sprinkle remaining Romano cheese and shredded mozzarella.  It should look like this:

Cover and bake for 30 minutes.  You will need to let this cool before you can serve it.  You also may want to serve small portions - it is rich.  You'll notice that the combination of the tomatoes, heavy cream and pesto taste a bit like a vodka sauce, but you will be happy you didn't take shortcuts.

Garnish with parsley and enjoy!

cindy

Baked Rigatoni & Meatballs

I am not Italian.  However, we do have a "Soprano's Cookbook" that is pretty authentic.  Most of the recipes start with "Sunday Gravy" (a reference to sauce).  I made Sunday Gravy once.  I won't repeat that epic cooking day, because it just isn't worth 5-6 hours to make an Italian meal.  Last Sunday I decided to "wing it" and I'm pretty happy with the results.

Here's how I did it:

1 lb of sweet Italian sausage (ground)

1 lb of ground beef

2 jars of Emeril's Chunky Marinara

1 16 oz can diced tomatos

1 can tomato paste

seasoned croutons, crushed into fine breadcrumbs

2 cloves garlic
basil, red wine, oregano to taste
1 - 1 1/2 pound rigatoni
olive oil
1/2 pound Reggiano parmesan cheese
1/2 pound Pecorino Romano cheese

(Based on the ingredient list you can see I cook a little on the fly.)

Start with the meat.  Combine the sausage (make sure it's ground) and the ground beef.  Add in the breadcrumbs - just like meatloaf.  You can also add an egg if you like your meatballs to really stick together.  Mix together and roll into little meatballs (about 1" in diameter).  Put some olive oil into a 3 quart pot, just enough to thinly cover the bottom.  Brown the meatballs.  Remove the meatballs and set aside.  Drain the olive oil.

Combine sauce, tomatoes, paste, garlic, wine, basil and oregano in the same pot.  This is where I seriously cheated on Sunday Gravy.  You need to be a little creative here and work with the ingredients until you get to the taste you want.  You can also add a little cheese to taste.  Let your "gravy" simmer for a while and then add the meatballs.  Shred 1-2 cups of each cheese.

Follow the directions on the box for the pasta so cook it al dente (seriously, you don't think I make my own pasta, do you?)  Grease a baking dish with a little olive oil.  When your pasta is done, drain it and immediately put half of it in the baking pan.  Pour about 1/2 of the gravy over it and add about half of the shredded cheeses.  Then repeat another layer, finishing with lots of cheese on top.

Cover with tin foil and bake for 45 minutes at 325 degrees.  Remove foil and cook another 12-15 minutes.  Remove and let it cool for at least 10 minutes.

Serves 8 or have lots of leftovers

cindy