The recipe said it was the best baked ziti ever, and since I found it in a “Cook’s Illustrated” magazine it was sure to have been tested umpteen times before making that claim. “Cook’s” tends to focus on the minutiae, which makes for lengthy explanations and detailed instructions. They often deter me.
What attracted me this time was that the casserole could be made in advance – actually, most casseroles can be made in advance — so the extra pots and the extra bowls could all be washed and back in their hiding places.
The instructions noted that the pasta did not turn to mush, and this was the recipe’s main claim to fame.
In the end it was more like a lasagna as the slightly cooked ziti – although I used penne and mostaccioli would certainly do – was mixed into a half gallon of homemade tomato sauce and layered in a casserole dish with the traditional ricotta between the layers. Four cups of hand-grated mozzarella and Romano were literally locked down on top.
With Earl’s help, the dish was prepped in about an hour and a half, which is really three total person hours. It was the heaviest, densest, and thickest casserole to ever grace our fridge, something important to remember when moving it to and from a hot oven.
So . . . was the ziti mushy? It was not. But the tip on how to avoid that could easily have been condensed to a brief paragraph and translated into other pasta dishes. If you’re interested, after reading all this about a recipe I’ll never make again, here is the tip: Remove the pasta from the water before it reaches the al dente stage and save a cup of the pasta water when draining it.
Add the water back to the pasta before adding both to the tomato sauce. It’s as simple as that. Perhaps I could apply to “Cook’s Illustrated” as a writer, since this blog is certainly full of minutiae itself.
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