Dangerously Delicious Pasta Bake

I love pasta. I love cheese. I love tomatoes. I love garlic bread. I love lamp. (JK) Well I guess with my mixture of Italian and Japanese background it would be only right to share with you this pasta bake right after we had an Asian dish! It was delicious!! Each bite was full of flavor and definitely made enough to go around!! I found this recipe on Tracey's Culinary Adventure (still absolutely LOVING all her recipes)!  So let's stop the chit chat and get right down to it!!

Ingredients
1 (28 oz) can whole peeled tomatoes
1 lb. Italian sausage (Casing removed) hot or sweet
6 garlic cloves, minced
1/4 tsp red pepper flakes
1/2 tsp salt
3 C water
12 oz Ziti
1/2 c heavy cream
1 oz Parmesan cheese
Dash or two or three of parsley (flavor according to your liking)
4 oz Mozzarella cheese

Pre-heat your oven to 425 degrees.

Add your can of tomatoes to a food processor and pulse about 10-12 times until all the large pieces are broken down and you have "tomato sauce".

Set a LARGE skillet on the stove over medium heat. Add the sausage (casings removed) and cook until no longer pink. All the while take a wooden fork or spatula and break up the sausage as you cook. 

The casings are still on in this picture. The easiest way to remove them (if you never have) is to take a small knife and slide it under the casing the whole length of the sausage. If you try and peel it off it can get messy and squishy (couldn't think of a better word lol). This way once you have a slit the entire length of the sausage you can just peel it back and it comes right off! 

Once the sausage is cooked, go ahead and add in the garlic and red pepper. Cook about 30 seconds to 1 minute, or until it gets fragrant (I promise this won't take very long)! 

Garlic-I can smell it cooking just looking at it

Stir in your tomato blend and salt. Reduce the heat and simmer for about 10 minutes. 

I threw in some green onion at the last minute! Added color and little pop of flavor! 

Once you have simmered this mixture on the stove, add the 3 cups of water and pasta to the skillet (I told you that you would need a BIG skillet)!! Cover and turn up the heat back medium and cook about 15 minutes! You are going to want to stir this frequently or else it will all start to stick together and to the pan!!

After about 15 minutes (I checked the pasta to see if was soft) you're going to want to add the heavy cream, Parmesan cheese, and parsley. Stir this all together and season with salt and pepper. 

Heavy cream to help thicken the sauce

Okay, now if you have a skillet that is oven safe, you're going to want to top the pasta with Mozzarella cheese and place it in the oven for 10 minutes to bake. My skillet is NOT oven safe so I transferred mine to a baking dish, topped it with cheese and baked for 10 minutes! Threw in a couple slices of bread (in the toaster) to make garlic bread slices while the pasta was cooking! After the 10 minutes of cooking, your cheese should be melted and slightly browned on top! WARNING: this is a heavy dish and will make plenty! So, pace yourself!! I wanted to eat it ALL but also didn't want to wake up the next morning and only be able to fit in stretchy pants for the next few days! Moral of the story here: A small helping with go a long way because it's rich with flavor and the sausage adds some "meat" to any helping! (Sorry, no pun was intended there! That was cheesy (again sorry))!! Sheesh!! 

Pre-Bake

Right out of the oven

Ready to eat!

A good indication that it was delicious! 

Wiped the plate down with my last bite of bread (just in case you were thinking, Did she lick the plate clean?)

So, there you have it! A delicious weeknight meal that will last you and yours a couple of days!! Check back soon for a pork tenderloin recipe!! Until then...

~Happy Eating~

Italian Sausage Meatballs and Spaghetti

Wow, time has flown by and I finally had some time to sit down and share a meal with ya'll!! It was one of those nights where we had some random items hanging around and the Italian came out in me full force with this one!! Spaghetti and meatballs is a favorite of mine. I love to throw in all sorts of yummies to make it a little less ordinary! So, I pulled the drawers out of the fridge and looked for things I needed to make fast before they went bad and realized I could make a mean spaghetti dinner! It was fabulous and everything was just hanging around our cabinets and fridge, so here is how I dressed it up.

I threw a package of spaghetti in a large pot and started that cooking, while Dee Jay started on the meatballs. We had a little over a pound of ground Italian sausage ready to be cooked so he mashed up the meat and threw in a couple handfuls of finely diced onion, and tossed in a little handful of oatmeal. I had a left-over jar of Ragu spaghetti sauce, so I tossed that on a back-burner and chopped the rest of the onion and tossed it in. I added a dash (shake the container once or twice) of oregano and parsley. Then found some red pepper flakes to add a kick to the sauce! When the spaghetti was done, I drained the water in the sink added a splash of red wine vinegar and about two tablespoons of butter. We tossed the sauce in with spaghetti and left it on the stove on low while the meatballs finished cooking!

When everything was ready to go I warmed up some garlic bread in the oven and served it up!! The meal saved an onion and a jar of sauce from meeting their doom! It's so easy to grab things around your kitchen and start cooking something regular and give it a little individual taste of your own! If you're out of ideas for cooking and about to throw a microwave meal in, look around and think to yourself what tastes good together and what could make an easy meal when you're at the end of your groceries!! You'll find you have enough food left to feed a family of 10 for a week if you really use your brain :) It's fun to cook like this, even though some people think it's scary or afraid they will just mess it up! You know what tastes good to you...So, I'm challenging you to try it out! It's fun to come up with a meal by yourself and we LOVED this! I could eat Italian food every single day, so it didn't take long to know what I wanted to do! If you get a good idea going, send them my way!! I love to hear what ya'll are cooking in your kitchens!! Stay tuned because I just made an incredible venison roast that will be added very soon!! Hunting season is almost upon us once again, and this girl could not be more excited to finally have some meat back in the freezer!!

Sprinkle some Parmesan cheese on top when you're ready to eat :)

~HAPPY EATING~

Ziti for 20 (or close)

So, have you ever read a recipe and started cooking only to find that either a) you went wrong somewhere or b) the person who originally cooked the recipe studied at Hogwarts school of magic and "somehow" made it work? Well, I'm not really sure which is the case here but let me tell you, I just made the BIGGEST casserole of my life! It's a good thing I had DJ and his brother, Craig here to help me tackle this beast! We still have leftovers, but we are down to only a square or two! YAY!! This is a super delicious and a very easy dish to make (and still tastes great as leftovers)! Before I start, I want to tell you that the recipe called for a 9x13 pan. I am here to tell you a 20x20 might have been easier and a lot less messy!! I had to place a big cookie sheet under the casserole dish just to keep the oven rack from bending haha!!! So, you can find the original recipe here on a very wonderful blog titled The Girl Who Ate Everything. She has some really great recipes and I can't wait to try more of them very soon! I will say she did note also that it makes a "heaping" 9x13 casserole, but her picture is so pretty! When we tried to maneuver ours out of the pan it was only pure luck we got it out in kind of one piece! So here we go...get ready to EAT!!!

Here are the ingredients you will need:
1 lb Ziti pasta
1 onion, chopped
1 lb. Italian Sausage
2 ts minced garlic
2 ts Italian seasoning
2 jars (26 oz EACH) spaghetti sauce--I used Ragu's Roasted garlic and Six Cheese
6 oz Provolone cheese, sliced (9 rounds)
1 1/2 cups sour cream
8 oz Mozzarella cheese
Grated Parmesan

First, you're going to want to get the pasta boiling in some salt water. Cook as the package directs!

While the pasta is cooking get out your large skillet and brown the onion and sausage over medium/high heat. Add minced garlic and cook for another minute. Then add the spaghetti sauce and Italian seasoning and simmer for 15 minutes.

Pre-heat your oven to 350 degrees and butter your 9x13 pan (get ready to work some magic here)!!
Layer:
1/2 cooked Ziti
1/2 sauce/meat mixture
Provolone cheese slices
Sour Cream
Remaining Ziti
Remaining Sauce
Mozzerella
Then top it off with Parmesan cheese

Bake this for 30 minutes (20 minutes covered with foil and 10 without)

Note: You might want to add an extra pan to the bottom if you have spills...and get napkins nearby to clean up after the spillage you will probably get as you try to get it all to fit in the pan :)

DELICIOUS!! 

~Happy Eating~

The Girl Who Ate Everything