Ricotta Bake

Hey, all!

This happens to be Newlywed Vegetarian's 50th post! Neat. I wasn't sure what I expected when I started this in terms of how long it'd go, but 50 seems like a nice benchmark to get to.

Anywho.

This is what we're going to talk about today.

But this is what led to it.

Hubby surprised me the other night by deciding to brave homemade ravioli. The man who is self-professed to only have a few staple dishes decided to make ravioli. As you can imagine, I was quite impressed.

We'll hopefully be trying that out again together this weekend, this time breaking out the pasta machine we got a few months ago, but the main reason that these ravioli are important right now is that this ricotta bake would not have happened if not for the ravioli. Hubby made a wee bit too much filling for his ravioli, so we had some left over in the fridge. I figured, why not make something else tasty out of it?

That's how this bad boy happened. It's reminiscent of lasagna but not quite lasagna-y enough that I felt comfortable calling it a lasagna. Therefore, ricotta bake.

Let's get down to it:

Prep time: 10 minutes

Cook time: 50 minutes

Serves: 4-6 (this stuff is dense, y'all.)

Ingredients:

1/2 box of tricolor rotini
Leftover ravioli filling (see below)
1 jar homemade or store-bought pasta sauce
3/4 cup mozzarella cheese

For the cheese filling:

1/4 cup frozen spinach, thawed and shredded
1/2 cup ricotta
1 egg (really, 1/2 egg, but it's up to you)
2 tablespoons parmesan cheese
3 tablespoons mozzarella cheese
1 pinch nutmeg
Salt and pepper, to taste

Directions:

1. Make your cheese filling, since you're probably not using left-overs like me. Just combine everything in one big bowl and you're done!

2. Follow the directions on your pasta box to boil the pasta. As always, you are welcome to use whatever kind of pasta you like. I'm just a color-oriented person so I like the rotini.

3. Grab a casserole pan. I believe the technical term is a loaf pan, but I always think of it as the "banana bread pan" because that's almost the only thing that my mom ever used it for when I was growing up. She uses it for more things now, but when I see it sitting out at her house I still expect banana bread later.

You can use whatever size or shape of pan you like, as well, but if you use a wider pan you'll probably have a few less layers than these directions call for.

Spray the pan with non-stick spray and then line the bottom with a thin layer of pasta.

Plop on several spoonfuls of the ravioli filling to form a layer of that.

Then, spoon on some pasta sauce.

Repeat!

And if you're using the kind of pan I am, you'll probably be able to repeat one more time (This one with that teensy bit of remaining ravioli filling.).

Finally, after you have drenched the remainder in the extra sauce you had in that jar, grab your mozzarella cheese and load it on.

4. Cover your casserole/bake/pasta goodness with tinfoil, but not so tightly that it's touching the cheese because then the cheese will stick to it. AKA, don't be like me.

Pop that baby in a 375-degree F oven and bake for 30 minutes.

Remove the tinfoil and weep that some of the cheese came up with the tinfoil. Then be distracted by the cheesy gooey goodness that's left, and weep no more.

(P.S., if your cheese does stick to your tinfoil and you happen to eat that cheese off that tinfoil, I will not judge.)

Pop that back into the oven for another 10 minutes to help the cheese harden a bit on top.

5. Since we used rotini instead of lasagna, the only thing that needs cutting is the cheese on the top. The rest of the bake can just be scooped out.

I cut ours into six servings since it's so dense, but if you're super hungry it could probably be divided into four.

Here's Hubby's. (He'll never say it, but he hates having to wait for me to take pictures of something before he can eat it.)

And here's mine.

So cheesy. We brought it for lunch, too!

Enjoy!