Cooking for Wimps: Baked Pasta

[omorka]

1 package pasta (ziti, penne, or farfalle will all work)

Cook 2 minutes less than the package directions say to. Salt the water well. Preheat the oven to 350° F while you're cooking it.

Now, at this point, if you were a Bad Motherfucker(TM), as in laughingrat's epic Cooking For Bad Motherfuckers posts, I would tell you to prepare a marinara or bolognese sauce from scratch. And indeed, on days when I am secure in my Bad Motherfuckertude, I would do so. If you are the kind of GQMF who spends a good lazy Sunday making a huge batch of such sauce from scratch and then freezes it in quart containers in your chest freezer - that is, if you are the sort of badass who plans ahead - why, then, get one of those suckers out of the freezer and thaw it out. But if you, like me, have failed to plan ahead, possibly due to the lack of a chest freezer, and do not have the hour or more simmering the sauce would take, why, take

1 quart jar of your favorite jarred pasta sauce
1 lb ground beef

Brown the ground beef until it's properly browned, which is to say, no more pink and starting to lose the grey, and then pour in the sauce and stir it around. If you usually add a little basil or oregano to your jarred sauce because That Shit Is Bland, Yo, why then, add it. Turn the heat down to low and let this simmer while the pasta boils.

Somewhere around here, get a reasonably large casserole dish out and butter the inside. Oh, okay, you can use olive oil if you must, but I'm telling you it will taste better with butter. Reserve

two or three tablespoons of butter

to the side, and peel

three big cloves of garlic.

Panic because you own two garlic presses and can't find either of them until you realize the good one is in the dishwasher. When the pasta's done, drain it and leave it in the colander for a few minutes. Cut the reserved butter (yes, yes, you can substitute olive oil here, too, but it will taste different; me, I like having three different fats in this) into the now-empty pasta pot, and melt it over low heat. Crush the garlic cloves into the butter and raise the heat to medium-low. Sizzle the crushed garlic until it's fragrant and the very smallest pieces are beginning to brown. Dump the drained pasta into the garlic butter and toss merrily, until the pasta is thoroughly coated. Turn both stove eyes off, because I'm paranoid about that sort of thing.

Pour half the garlic-buttered pasta into the buttered casserole. Sprinkle over

3 T or so of grated Parmesan

followed by half of the meat sauce. Cover that with

3/4 of a cup or so of shredded mozzarella or provolone

Then repeat - pasta, Parmesan, sauce, cheese. Top with another T of Parmesan. Stick the whole mess in the oven for 30 minutes or until the cheese on top is melted and beginning to brown. Remove from the oven and dig in.

You could, if you were an ovo-lacto vegetarian, dispense with the meat entirely, but make sure you heat the sauce before adding it to the pasta, or it will take 15 minutes more in the oven.


edited because I fail at spelling

Comments

You're a GQMF

[laughingrat.livejournal.com]

OMGZZZZZZ that sounds so tasty goddamn.

(Secret: I cannot prepare a decent red sauce. TRUFAX)

Aww, thanks!

[omorka.livejournal.com]

It's nothing complicated, but it's comfort food and neither the Spouse nor I felt like venturing out to get dinner tonight, because we're both sick and tired, and goddamn is it cold out.

I haven't done spaghetti sauce from scratch in months. (Well, I say "scratch," but I use canned tomatoes.) I should gut up and do it again sometime.

Re: Aww, thanks!

[laughingrat.livejournal.com]

Oh, I'd use canned tomatoes too, totally. Do you do the basic, you know, onions and spices thing? Or do you do something exotic? :-D Giant Eagle had pasta and Dei Fratelli (sp) canned tomatoes on sale the other day, but I didn't get any of either cos I barely know what to do with them. O well. It's possible that I've been conditioned for so long to eat the ultra-sweet commercial stuff that I think any red sauce I make that doesn't taste like that is RONG?

Re: Aww, thanks!

[omorka.livejournal.com]

Yup. What I do is:

1 lb ground beef
1 medium or 1/2 large onion, diced
3 cloves garlic, minced (more if you like garlic)

Brown the ground beef over med-high heat. Add the onions when about half the pink is gone. Add the garlic as soon as all the pink is gone. Stir until the onion is translucent and cooked through, because raw onion is Nasty.

1 can diced tomatoes
1 can tomato sauce

Add, stir, let cook down for about two minutes while you remember you didn't get all the herbs out yet. Add

2 t dried basil
1 1/2 t dried oregano
1/2 t dried thyme
1/4 t dried rosemary, crushed
1 large bay leaf
salt and pepper to taste
a teeny pinch cracked red pepper (more if you like it a lot)

Stir around until the herbs are well mixed in. Turn the heat to low, cover, and leave it for an hour, stirring occasionally. Come back and taste. Add more red pepper if it needs it. Start the pasta somewhere around here. When the pasta is done, ladle sauce over and sprinkle with Parmesan.

If you want to use fresh herbs instead of dried, they should probably go in around ten minutes before the end of the simmering process and you should change t to T for the basil and double the amount of oregano. (The rosemary doesn't need doubling. YMMV on the thyme.) I don't use fresh herbs unless I'm using fresh tomatoes, too, though, and that's a PITA because you have to peel and seed them.

Edited to add: some people add a t of sugar to this, but honestly, if you used good tomatoes and a good yellow onion to begin with, it'll be about as sweet as I can stand a savory dish to be. If you really want it sweet, use a Walla Walla or a Vidalia or a Texas 1015 or some other sort of sweet onion, and that'll take care of it.

Re: Aww, thanks!

[laughingrat.livejournal.com]

3 cloves garlic, minced (more if you like garlic)

YES

a teeny pinch cracked red pepper (more if you like it a lot)

YES

Geez, that sounds super good.

Do you think if one caramelized the onions (a hugely lengthy step, but still) one might avoid any need for sugar?

Re: Aww, thanks!

[omorka.livejournal.com]

Sure, if you can't find a sweet onion to start with, but I'm serious about a good Vidalia or 1015 taking care of that by itself.

I don't have that big a peppertongue, so I don't use more than a tiny pinch of the red pepper, myself. However, I use something close to half a head of garlic.

Re: Aww, thanks!

[laughingrat.livejournal.com]

Garlic is so great. I just returned, unread, a cookbook called For the Love of Garlic. I oughta check it back out...

Peppertongue, hee. Ira will eat some spicy foods, but you know who loved, just loved, spicy kormas and pad Thais? Chico. Little old fat Chico, who come to think of it was before your time. But goddamn, that rat loved spicy foods. When he was chowing down on his very first korma, I told him, "Chico, that food comes from India. In India, you could be a god. A fat god."

That is your random rat story for the night.

Re: Aww, thanks!

[greeneyes-rpi.livejournal.com]

In an effort to spread the love, I now present my Italian mother-in-law's red sauce (otherwise known as gravy):

http://greeneyes-rpi.livejournal.com/6670.html

It's easier than it sounds. And freaking delicious. Freezes beautifully. :)

[kamiki-seto.livejournal.com]

I do a baked spaghetti that's similar to (in spirit) but also completely different from this. This sounds like something wonderful and I'm going to have to absolutely try it out. I never would have thought of tossing the pasta with the garlic.

I've found a good thing to do is cook my hamburger ahead of time and keep it in the freezer packed up by the Foodsaver/Seal-A-Meal. Then when I want cooked hamburger, I just thaw a package in the microwave. I HATE cooking hamburger and this gets it all out of the way several batches at a time.

[omorka.livejournal.com]

Tossing the pasta with the garlic butter also keeps the pasta from sticking together in one huge lump when baked.

I don't mind cooking hamburger, especially since I'm usually browning half an onion with it and I kind of like the smell of ground beef and onion. But I'm totally in favor of cooking ahead whenever possible.

[kamiki-seto.livejournal.com]

I've also taken to spicing my recipe up by buying the pre-cooked frozen Johnsonville Italian sausages and tossing one or two (chopped up) in with the hamburger. Yeah, it's quick lazy cooking and real sausage would probably be better, but it works for me and adds a nice bit of extra.

[greeneyes-rpi.livejournal.com]

I'm totally full at the moment, but just reading the phrase "tossing the pasta with the garlic butter" makes me salivate. ;)

[bibulb.livejournal.com]

As the Spouse in question who got to enjoy the fruits of her labor, I would like to note that this was ONE FUCKING AWESOME MEAL.

[princejvstin.livejournal.com]

Not too far removed from "Mazetti", a dish my family makes that uses an Eastern European style noodle. The buttering of the pasta is new, though, and I will have to try that.