ricotta egg biscuits

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Baked Ziti

Posted by Elise on Dec 8, 2010

Filed under Budget, Casserole, Comfort Food, Pasta



Now here's a classic midweek meal, or a hot dish to bring to a potluck. Baked ziti is a lot like American lasagna, but easier to make; it has practically the same ingredients but you don't have to fuss with lots of layers or broken noodles. This recipe is a pretty basic version, but everyone who makes baked ziti has their own unique tricks and twists to it. Some vary the cheeses, some the meat, some make meatless versions, and some people leave out the tomato sauce for a truly cheese-tastic casserole.

This version uses bulk Italian sausage, as well as a key fresh herb. In summer, that would be basil. In winter, rosemary. You could also easily use savory, sage, thyme or parsley. Ziti is a pretty common pasta shape in most areas, but you can substitute penne pasta if you can't find it. You want a substantial short pasta shape with places to hold the sauce and meat. You can make this ahead, and either refrigerate or freeze before you do the final baking.
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If you don't have Italian seasoning in the pantry, use 1 teaspoon dried oregano, 1 teaspoon dried basil and 1/2 teaspoon dried thyme.
Ingredients

* 1 pound ziti (can sub penne) pasta
* Olive oil
* 1 pound bulk Italian sausage or ground beef or pork
* 1 large onion, chopped
* 3-4 garlic cloves, chopped
* 1 Tbsp fresh rosemary (or basil), minced
* 1 Tbsp Italian seasoning
* 1/2 teaspoon red pepper flakes
* 1 large jar of marinara sauce (about 32 ounces) or make your own tomato sauce
* 1/2 pound of mozzarella cheese, grated
* 1 heaping cup of ricotta cheese
* 1 cup grated parmesan or pecorino cheese

Method

1 Bring a large pot of water to a strong boil. Add about a tablespoon of salt for every 2 quarts of water. Add the pasta and boil, uncovered, until the pasta is al dente—edible but still a little firm. Drain the pasta through a colander. Toss with a little olive oil so the pasta does not stick together while you make the sauce.

2 Pour a tablespoon or so of olive oil into a large sauté pan on medium-high to heat. When the oil is hot, add the bulk sausage or ground meat. Do not crowd the pan (work in batches if needed). Break up any large chunks of sausage as it cooks. Brown well. Don't stir that often or it will be more difficult for the meat to brown. If you are using ground beef or pork instead of sausage, add a little salt.

3 When the meat is mostly browned, add the onions and stir well to combine. Sauté everything until the onions are translucent and beginning to brown, about 4-5 minutes. Add the garlic, rosemary or basil, Italian seasoning and red pepper flakes and stir to combine. Cook 1 minute, then add the tomato sauce and stir well. Bring to a simmer.

4 Preheat the oven to 350°F. Spread a thin layer of sauce in the bottom of a 9x13-inch casserole pan, then dot the surface with half the ricotta cheese. Ladle in some sauce with the pasta, mix it well and add the pasta into the casserole.

5 Pour the rest of the sauce over the pasta, dot the remaining ricotta cheese over the pasta, and sprinkle on top both the mozzarella and the Parmesan cheese. Bake in the oven until the top is nicely browned, about 20 minutes.

Serves at least 8

Crespelle with Ricotta and Marinara

Ingredients
Crespelle

1. 3/4 cup all-purpose flour
2. 1/2 teaspoon salt
3. 2 large eggs
4. 3/4 cup milk
5. 1 tablespoon melted unsalted butter
6. Olive oil

Filling

1. 1 1/2 cups ricotta cheese
2. 1 tablespoon chopped parsley
3. 2/3 cup freshly grated Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese
4. Salt and freshly ground pepper
5. 1 1/2 cups marinara sauce

Directions

1. MAKE THE CRESPELLE In a medium bowl, whisk the flour with the salt. In a small bowl, whisk the eggs with the milk. Whisk the egg mixture into the flour mixture until smooth. Whisk in the melted butter until just blended. Cover the batter and refrigerate for 1 hour.
2. Heat a 10-inch nonstick skillet over moderately high heat. With a paper towel, rub the skillet with olive oil. Pour in 1/4 cup of the crespelle batter and tilt the skillet to distribute the batter. Cook the crespella until golden brown on the bottom, 2 minutes. Flip and cook until browned in spots, 1 minute longer. Invert the crespella onto a baking sheet. Repeat with the remaining batter, rubbing the pan with oil as needed. You should have 8 crespelle.
3. MAKE THE FILLING Preheat the oven to 375°. In a medium bowl, blend the ricotta with the chopped parsley and 1/3 cup of the Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese. Season the filling with salt and pepper.
4. Lay the 8 crespelle on a work surface. Spread 2 rounded tablespoons of the ricotta filling over half of each crespella. Fold the crespelle over the filling, then fold them in half again to form quarters.
5. Spread half of the marinara sauce in the bottom of a 9-by-13-inch baking dish. Arrange the filled crespelle in the dish in a single layer, overlapping them slightly. Top with the remaining marinara sauce and sprinkle with the remaining 1/3 cup of Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese. Bake for about 25 minutes, until golden brown and bubbling; serve.

Homemade ricotta

The California Cook: Homemade ricotta -- it's easier, and better, than you think
With just a few simple ingredients and a few minutes cooking and resting time, you've got a wonderful appetizer, dessert or pasta filling.

(By Russ Parsons, Los Angeles Times

September 30, 2010

Servings: About 1 pound, or 2 cups

Note: This recipe requires the use of a thermometer.

9 cups whole milk

1 cup buttermilk

1 teaspoon salt

2 1/2 tablespoons distilled vinegar

1. Heat the milk and buttermilk in a heavy-bottomed pot over medium heat to a temperature of about 185 degrees. Stir in the salt and vinegar and remove from the heat. Let stand until curds have formed, 5 to 10 minutes. Pull the curds gently to the side.

2. Line a strainer with cheesecloth and set it over a bowl. Using a perforated skimmer, gently lift the mass of curds out of the pot and into the cheesecloth-lined strainer. Repeat until no more curds remain. Discard the remaining whey.

3. Drain the curds for 5 minutes, then transfer to a covered container to store in the refrigerator until ready to use. The ricotta is best used the same day, but will still be good for 2 to 3 days.

Each one-fourth cup serving: 110 calories; 8 grams protein; 2 grams carbohydrates; 0 fiber; 8 grams fat; 5 grams saturated fat; 24 mg. cholesterol; 2 grams sugar; 163 mg. sodium.


But how does it taste? Honestly, I was a little skeptical at first. I mean, outside of some really great stuff I've had in Italy, I'd always thought ricotta was meant to be kind of bland, so how much better can bland be?

Short answer: Lots. Honestly, this ricotta is so good it can be used as a starring ingredient, not just asthe paste that holds together lasagna. The flavor is delicate with a wonderfully milky combination of sweet and tang.

And it's so easy to make, I don't think I'll be buying the packaged stuff again, outside of an emergency.

What do you do with homemade ricotta? How about spooning a mound in the center of a platter, drizzling it with good olive oil and seasoning it with sea salt and coarsely ground black pepper. Surround it with toasted bread slices and maybe some grilled eggplant, zucchini or peppers.

For dessert, do the same thing, but drizzle with honey instead of oil and serve it with fresh berries or cut-up late-summer fruit (fresh figs are amazing right now), with sliced toasted almonds scattered over top.

If you need a main course, mix ricotta with some chopped fresh herbs, spoon it onto a square of cooked fresh pasta, lay another square on top and drizzle everything with sage butter. Instant lasagna. If you don't have enough time, simply use the herbed ricotta to dress al dente dried pasta shapes such as penne or orecchiette.

After playing with it for a while (I've had lots of ricotta in my refrigerator the last month), I'd say that the more restrained the combination, the better with this stuff. One of my favorite dishes was a lightly herbed mixture used to stuff roasted and peeled red and yellow bell peppers.

Or, based on how amazingly good fresh ricotta is with honey, try making gelato with ricotta, honey and a little orange liqueur. You'll need to add a little milk and cream to keep the mixture from being chalky, but not so much as to obscure the ricotta flavor (it'll still have a little of that texture … think of cannoli filling).

And those are just a few ideas of many.

Now there are those who will tell you that this cheese isn't truly ricotta. And pedantic though they may be, I'm afraid they're right. True ricotta is poverty food intended to wring the last bits of protein from milk by reheating the whey that's left from making another cheese (hence the name ricotta — or recooked). And if you have a lot of whey laying around, you certainly should try it that way.

Otherwise, you're better off with this shortcut method, which may be less than totally authentic but is certainly totally delicious.

Essentially what happens is that heating the milk changes the nature of the proteins and they begin to stick together, or coagulate. Adding acid further coagulates the proteins — it's not unlike what happened when you were a kid and poured orange juice into your cereal milk at breakfast.

You gently spoon this moist mass of curds out of the pot (I use a Chinese "spider" skimmer) and set them in a cheesecloth-lined strainer to drain for five minutes, and you've got ricotta. What's left behind in the pot is the greenish-gray whey, which, if you're in a particularly traditional frame of mind, you can feed to your prosciutto pigs.

As you might guess, with a process so simple, there is ample room for variation. I spent a couple of weeks trying as many as I could find and after many, many gallons of milk, I think I've come up with a version that combines the best of all of them.

The first variable is the milk itself. You can make ricotta with whole milk or skim milk, and with the addition of whipping cream or buttermilk. I even tried it with goat's milk (the best ricotta I've ever tasted was made from sheep's milk; commercial American goat's milk is not worth the effort).

For the acidification, you can use lemon juice, vinegar or buttermilk. (I also tried a recipe using vegetable rennet as the coagulant, but I'm afraid that level of cheese-making must be just a bit beyond me.)

Or you can use a combination. That's what I wound up with. There is enough acidity in buttermilk that you can use just that and whole milk to make ricotta, but you have to use a lot of buttermilk (2 cups for a half-gallon of milk). While that buttery flavor is nice, it becomes a little too strong in that concentration.

Regular old distilled white vinegar also works well, but the result is a little bland. Lemon juice works fine, but the acidity will vary depending on the season and so it's a little unreliable. So I compromised, using both 1 cup of buttermilk and 21/2 tablespoons of vinegar to make a ricotta that has a delicate but not overpowering lactic tang.

Temperature is another variable. After cooking ricottas to 165, 175, 180, 185 and 190 degrees, I found that the higher the temperature, the greater the amount of cheese you're able to pull from the whey. On the other hand, once the temperature gets to about 190, the milk solids that stick to the bottom of the pan begin to caramelize and scorch, making them so sticky it takes a lot of scrubbing to clean the pot.

In my laziness, I decided to settle for a smidgen less cheese in exchange for much easier clean-up. At 185 degrees, 10 cups of milk makes about 2 cups — or 1 pound — of cheese. That's plenty.

Finally, how long you let the cheese stand in the strainer will affect the final texture. The longer it goes, the drier and firmer the curds will be. For me, the sweet spot came after about 5 minutes, when there is still enough moisture in the cheese that it oozes slightly, but the curds have begun to firm up.

At this point, you may well be tempted to eat the ricotta straight out of the strainer, and indeed, there is something incredibly luxurious about eating spoonfuls of the warm curds, sprinkled with just a little salt and pepper.

russ.parsons@latimes.com

Copyright © 2010, Los Angeles Times

Sausage, Spinach, Ricotta Stuffed Pasta Shells Recipe

* 1 12-ounce package jumbo pasta shells
* 1 Tbsp olive oil
* 1 cup finely chopped yellow onion
* 1 pound sweet Italian sausage, casings removed
* 1 Tbsp minced garlic
* 1 large egg
* 16-ounces ricotta cheese
* 10-ounces chopped frozen spinach, thawed, squeezed dry, chopped further (or 10 ounces chopped fresh spinach)
* 1 cup grated Parmesan cheese
* 1 Tbsp chopped fresh basil or 1 teaspoon dried basil
* 1/4 cup unseasoned bread crumbs
* 1/2 teaspoon salt
* 1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper
* 1 28-ounce can tomatoes with herbs, tomatoes broken up (or your favorite tomato or pasta sauce)

* 2 9x13 shallow baking dishes

Method

1 Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil (1 teaspoon salt per quart of water). Cook the pasta shells according to the instructions on the package. Drain, rinse in cold water, and set aside.

2 Heat olive oil in a large skillet on medium high heat. Add the onions and cook until softened, about 5 minutes. Add the sausage to the pan, breaking up the sausage into smaller bits. Cook sausage until cooked through, and no pink remains, about 5 minutes. Add the garlic and cook until fragrant, about 30 seconds to a minute more. Remove pan from heat.

3 Beat the egg lightly in a large bowl. Mix in the ricotta, chopped spinach, 1/2 cup of the Parmesan cheese, basil, bread crumbs, salt, pepper, and sausage mixture. Fill each cooked pasta shell with some of the ricotta, spinach, sausage mixture.

4 Spread 1/2 cup chopped canned tomatoes over the bottom of each of the baking dishes. Arrange the stuffed pasta shells in the dishes. Spread the remaining tomatoes over the top of the pasta shells.

At this point you can make ahead, to freeze (up to four months) or refrigerate before cooking. (If freezing, cover with foil, then wrap with plastic wrap.)

5 Heat oven to 375°F. Cover the pans with foil and bake for 30 minutes, until hot and bubbling. Remove foil and sprinkle with remaining Parmesan cheese, bake uncovered for 10 more minutes.

Serves 8.

Rigatoni, carmelized onions, ricotta and herbs from Orangette, the blog

I loved caramelized onions, and I have some good looking feta that I'll try instead of the ricotta. We shall see. Molly, the blogger, served with with a salad with feta, sliced radishes, radiccio, endive and cilantro dressed in a mustard red wine vinagrette that looked wonderful, so if i choose that, I'll not use feta but perhaps some monzarella - if I don't have the ricotta salada. I have a bagful of fresh herbs that I harvested from the herb garden last week before a lengthy cold spell suggested pending doom.

Brandon tried squeezing a bit of lemon over his serving, and he found it quite tasty. At his suggestion, I have included optional lemon wedges below.

3 Tbs extra-virgin olive oil
1 lb. sweet onions, such as Walla Walla or Vidalia, cut in half from stem to root and then into ¼-inch slices
2 Tbs unsalted butter
5 medium garlic cloves, minced
½ lb. leeks, cut into 1/8-inch rings and washed
½ lb. red onions, quartered and sliced
1 bunch scallions, trimmed and cut into 2-inch lengths
½ cup water
Salt, to taste
Pepper, to taste
1 lb. rigatoni

To serve:
4 oz. ricotta salata, coarsely grated
¼ cup finely chopped fresh Italian parsley
1 small handful chives, finely chopped
Flaky sea salt, such as Maldon
Lemon wedges, optional

In a large (12- to 14-inch) skillet, warm the olive oil over medium heat until hot but not smoking. Add the sweet onions, and reduce the heat. Cook over medium-low, stirring occasionally, until softened and translucent; then raise the heat to medium and cook, stirring often, until deeply golden and caramelized. Remove the pan from the heat, and transfer the onions to a bowl. Set aside.

In the same skillet, heat the butter over medium heat. When it has stopped foaming and is thoroughly melted, add the garlic, leeks, red onion, and scallions, and cook, stirring regularly, until very soft and golden. Add the water, and cook until the liquid evaporates. Season lightly with salt. Remove from the heat, and stir in the sweet onions.

Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil, and cook the rigatoni until tender but al dente. In the last minute of cooking, return the onion mixture to medium-high heat. Drain the pasta, add it to the onion mixture, and toss over medium-high heat for 1 minute. Remove from the heat and toss more, if necessary, to thoroughly disperse the onions amidst the pasta. Serve immediately, topped with plenty of ricotta salata and sprinklings of parsley and chives. Salt as needed, and finish with a quick squeeze of lemon, if you like.

Yield: 4 servings

yum yum yum: pasta with ricotta and sugar snap peas

but first, dear reader:

i am blogging in my living room, listening to the baby cardinals cheep loudly in their small nest on the front stoop, not 30 feet away from me. and the thunder for a much needed rain. and smelling this divine dinner that DAVID is making from the gourmet cookbook heather gave me for christmas: garlic lime chicken, broccoli with browned butter, capers and parsley, fresh corn on the cob. i cannot wait! it smells jam up.

Sugar snap peas are terrific raw. They are also terrific sauteed in a little butter and sprinkled with sea salt.

a recipe in Chez Panisse's Pasta & Pizza cookbook for a pasta with just the peas from the sugar snap pea pods.

cut all the pods in half on a diagonal.

Now then, I bought ziti for this so bring a big pot of water to a boil. That'll take a while, especially if it's a big pot.

Take a head of garlic, and separate out six cloves, smash them, remove the skin. Take pancetta--a big piece--and cut it into cubes. Also, you'll need some sage. And get some chicken stock heated in a pot (about 1 cup). (If you make your own, you should have some in the freezer.)

Ok, now the fun part. Heat olive oil in a dutch oven (or a skillet, if you'd prefer). Add the garlic, the pancetta, and the sage:

It's a very delicate process, but you've gotta cook this long enough for both the garlic to turn golden (without burning!) and for the pancetta to release its fat and cook through. All in all, it took about 15 minutes, but I modulated the heat constantly, wanting a sizzle but not a crackle. 15 minutes later, the apartment smelled incredible.

Here's where you spring into action: add salt to the boiling pot of water and then add the box of ziti. Stir it around.

Add the sugar snap peas to the pot with the garlic and pancetta (I had a big bunch of them, I'd say 3 cups?) and stir around. Add salt and pepper and some red chile flakes. Now add the chicken stock. It should just cover the peas. Bring to a boil and stir it all around.

Ideally, the pasta will be done just as the chicken stock's reduced and the peas are cooked through. You want the pasta to be super al dente because here you remove it with a spider and add it to the pot with the stock, the garlic, and the peas to finish cooking.

I added more salt, more pepper; then I added parmesan cheese--about 1 cup; I added more olive oil, to bring out the flavor, and finally, in a stroke, I think, perhaps, of genius--I added a big dollop of the ricotta

Ya, I know that's weird, to add whipped ricotta to a pasta but somehow it brought it all together.