My first pasta casserole was made with Gluten-free penne for my sister after Greta was born. As I was making it I realized that I should add ground beef to the mix, but alas, I am allergic to beef and therefore ne'er do I have it in the house. Deb's advice upon thawing it was, "it needed more sauce and the GF Penne doesn't hold up." Sorry Deb.
A few days later I decided to try again: Sun-dried Tomato and Roasted Red Pepper Casserole.
14 oz Sun-dried tomato (fake) sausage (from Tofurky)
3 - 4 cups Homemade marinara sauce (from my garden and FM)
8 oz Roasted Red Peppers (canned from my garden)
2 tsps Sun-dried tomato pesto
1/2 cup Onion, chopped (frozen from FM)
2 cups Mozzarella cheese, shredded
3 cups Tri-colored pasta (from Trader Joes)
I chopped and sauteed the (fake) sausage and then added the roasted red peppers, pesto and onions. Saute a little more. Meanwhile, cook pasta a few minutes less than directed and drain.
In 9x13 pan mix pasta and sausage mixture until well tossed. Top with cheese and bake at 350 until cheese is done (maybe 25 minutes).
I must say that I had no idea what I was doing. I was grabbing things from my cupboards and combining many of my favorite flavors. It felt so good knowing that my efforts over the summer to preserve so much food are helping me to create such fabulous dishes. This pasta dish, in particular, is amazing. Every time I eat it for lunch (at school) I rave about it to the French teacher.
Every Sunday night I host/cook for my House Church. We all put money in an envelope and when I buy groceries for them I just take the money along with me. Yesterday there was $7 in the envelope and I have to feed 6 people! What to buy...hmmm...what cheap yet tasty food could I buy? PASTA! And I just created 2 more pasta dishes (I can let you know how well they fare tomorrow night!).
Pasta Dish #1:
1 jar Ragu pasta sauce with Mushrooms
16 oz Tri-colored pasta
2 tbls bread crumbs
4 oz Mozzarella cheese, shredded
Boil pasta for 5 minutes and drain. Stir pasta and jar of Marinara sauce together in 2.5 qt dish. Sprinkle with bread crumbs and mozzarella cheese.
Pasta Dish #2 (for me!)
1 jar Ragu sauce with olive oil and garlic
16 oz Tri-colored pasta
2 tbls bread crumbs
4 oz Mozzarella cheese, shredded
8 oz breaded eggplant (prepped and frozen last fall from my garden!)
Same directions as Pasta #1 but I also stirred in the eggplant! I'm very excited to try it tomorrow! I'll serve both dishes with homemade garlic bread made from a loaf of French bread!
5 comments:
These ALL sound so yummy and pasta is such a favorite at our house (so is cheap :)
We'll definitely be trying the first one this week, besides in enchiladas I hadn't been using my canned roasted peppers, so I'm going to try it with those and my homemade pesto...yea!
My House Church said the pasta dishes were great! I do think that the more goodies I add the better the dish is. I liked 'em better when I added peppers, onions and pesto.
So my advice would be to play with your food - it does seem to be a hard casserole to mess up!
Oh - Maureen - I forgot that I also added a teaspoon or two of sun-dried tomatoes in oil to my fancy casserole. That's my favorite one so far.
The eggplant did hold up really well (I breaded it, fried it, froze it, thawed it then cooked with it!)
Everything sounds delicious. How come tofurky sounds like a bad word?
Tofurky DOES sound like a cuss word. And they make a mighty good (fake) sausage. I'm trying to wean myself from their delightfulness because it's not Real Food. :(
the sun-dried tomato tofurky sausage is a weakness. love it.
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