baked ziti - there can NEVER be too much cheese!

My friend and I convinced our boyfriends that we should have a Fondue Party. She recently got a fondue pot for Christmas, so we decided to make use of it and have a little shindig. How we enticed our men to come along with us was that there would be food number one, and also they could relax and watch the football game. What persuaded us was the idea that we could make Margaritas while the boys watched the game. I was assigned to bring the baked ziti and cookie-stuffed-cupcakes (like how I did for Halloween). I woke up early this morning to prepare the baked ziti and the baked goods.


First up was onion and garlic. I hate to admit that I took a play from Rachel Ray, but the way she uses a cheese grater to add garlic in dishes is ingenious.


Raw sausage is disgusting... Actually all raw meat is disgusting, which is probably why I avoid cooking meat unless I have to.


Making marinara sauce is hard- I mean, there's so many recipes out there and each one tells you to use a different type of tomato (whole, crushed, puree, blah). So I just got 2 random types of tomatoes and decided to blend them in a blender. (I love how the tequila is just chillin' in the background.)


Then everything gets added to the pot and left to simmer for a while.


Meanwhile I boiled the ziti and prepared the cheese filling. I've made this baked ziti before, and everyone seemed to have liked it . I used the same amount of cheeses as last time- a ton of ricotta, mozzarella, and parmesan (and by a ton, I literally mean a ton).


I generally make a three layer baked ziti, with the cheesy goodness in the middle layer. So first I layered the ziti and pasta sauce on the bottom of the baking dish.


Then the cheese (yumm) goes on top of that. I kept staring at it, because it did look like a lot of cheese. I was almost positive this was the same amount of cheese I used last time, so I just piled it all on top. I mean, personally, I have never been in a situation where I was like "damn, this is just too much cheese".


A final layer of pasta and sauce gets put on the cheese and then I sprinkled it with bread crumbs and (of course) more cheese. I brought it to my friend's place to bake, where we ate a ton of it after our fondue and nacho appetizers. This was the portion that was left over.


So although my baked ziti tasted good, I know that it could have been better.


My boyfriend said it was a little too cheesy... What! Food can never be too cheesy (and honestly, I am just appalled that he of all people would say that). I think he just has a thing against ricotta cheese (perhaps it was because of my ricotta muffins, lol). I agree with him though, I should have cut back on the ricotta and probably used more mozzarella cheese instead.


Another thing I need to do next time is make a better sauce. It wasn't saucy and creamy enough, which would have made it taste more like a real baked ziti.


While we were at my friend's place, I could barely even finish an entire plate because that point I was stuffed to the brim with fondue and margaritas.


Memo for next time: Less ricotta and more sauce.

---RECIPE---
I read a few recipes from the internet and made my own.

ingredients for pasta sauce:
1 pound ziti
1 pound Italian sausage out of casings
1 onion
A few cloves of garlic
2 big cans of tomatoes
Olive oil

directions for pasta:
1. Cook crumbled sausage in large pot with oil. Add onions then add garlic.
2. Add tomatoes (blended or not). Add seasonings like salt, pepper, Italian seasoning. Let simmer for like a half an hour.
3. Boil and drain ziti.
4. Take like a cup of sauce and put it to the side.
5. Add pasta to sauce.

ingredients for cheese layer:
15 oz ricotta cheese
1/2 cup parmesan cheese
8 oz mozzarella cheese
Italian seasoning

directions for assembling:
1. Put a layer of pasta and sauce in a large baking dish.
2. Layer all the cheese filling on top.
3. Put the remaining pasta and sauce on the top.
4. Get the reserved sauce and spread it all over.
5. Sprinkle with breadcrumbs and parmesan cheese.
6. Bake for like 15 minutes at 400 degrees F.

wontons stuffed with my rav filling - i refuse to throw away good cheese

I still had a plastic bag full of tasty mushroom-ricotta filling in the fridge (from my partially successful raviolis) and I needed to do something with it. I mean, there's no reason to get rid of a perfectly good mixture of mushrooms and cheese. I'm not sure if this should even be posted here, considering it's not technically a recipe... But I feel this is more of a redemption for me considering my raviolis didn't quite come out well. I replaced my thick homemade pasta dough with store bought wonton wrappers (hey, if I could, I would make my own wonton wrappers... but that's just pushing it).


Opposed to the raviolis where I used 2 sheets of dough, I only used 1 sheet of the wonton wrappers to fold around my filling.


I began with folding the corners upwards, almost like a purse. I made a few variations of this purse-style, mostly because I wasn't pleased with the way it kept coming out.


My mother who was sitting next to me making her own versions, decided to fold them over lazily hot-dog style. So basically we had a whole family of odd shaped wontons - Multiple purse styles, hot-dogs, hamburgers, circles, anything you can imagine.


So go figure- the only ones that burst and spilled out while baking in the oven were my odd-shaped purse ones. The simple shaped ones (a.k.a. the ones my mom made) held their own and remained perfectly intact.


I arranged them on a plate for little appetizers for us to eat before our actual dinner.


So how did they taste?- Exactly the same as the raviolis except with a much less noticeable dough surrounding the filling.


These were much more enjoyed than my ravioli and actually made a perfect little app. Believe it or not, the dough really did make a large impact on how tasty the final product was.

---RECIPE---

ingredients:
For the filling recipe, click here.

directions:
1. Spread about a teaspoon of filling in the center of each wonton wrapper.
2. Get a small bowl of water and with your fingertips wet the edges of the wrapper.
3. Wrap them up however you please, although I'd obviously now suggest a simple fold over.
4. Place them on a baking pan and drizzle oil on both sides of all the wontons.
5. Bake in the oven at 350 degrees for 10 or so minutes, or until they look done.

homemade raviolis - al dente to the extreme

After yesterday's pasta dough calamity, I hoped today would be more successful. I chose a mushroom and ricotta cheese filling for my ravioli, seeing as how much I love both mushrooms and ricotta. I searched and I searched until I found a suitable recipe for my filling that was both mushroom-y as well as cheese-y. Since I knew my pasta dough wouldn't be that good, I had to make sure the stuff inside of the ravioli made up for it. I figured that making the filling would be much easier and much less time consuming than the pasta dough...which was true.


The (non-cheese) ingredients seemed pretty basic- mushrooms, onion, and garlic. The only problem was that they said to use 4 ounces of crimini mushrooms, and quite honestly, I don't know what 4 ounces of mushrooms look like. I eyeballed it, according to the weight stated on the package of my mushrooms, but I knew I wasn't very close. And also, I chose my own preference of mushrooms because, well, this is my ravioli.


I probably went a little bit overboard, because I chopped the mushrooms for about 10 minutes making sure each piece was equal in size to all the others. I wanted to make sure each ravioli had the exact same amount of mushrooms and that none of them had chunky 'shrooms either.


My garlic and onion, both of which were also finely and evenly chopped.


So now that I had everything prepared (probably after a grueling 20 minutes of chopping), I set them aside to get my pan ready. I am probably the slowest cook ever. I need to make sure everything is exactly ready and exactly perfect, and not to mention I need to take a ton of breaks to grab my camera and take photos. Basically, I take my sweet ass time.


So first I put oil into my pan, let it sit until it gets hot, and then I added my onion. Shortly after, I added my perfectly chopped mushrooms. Meanwhile, I'm continuously running back and forth trying to take photos while not burning my 'shrooms.


And so this is what it looks like after taking everything out of the pan. Looks good so far, but all that is missing is the cheese!


Once again, I followed the instructions exactly and measured my ingredients precisely, as if I was baking something.


And this is the final filling product. It looks good, but it's a bit more ricotta-cheese-y than mushroom-y. I knew I under-estimated 4 ounces of mushrooms.


Anyways, back to my ravioli. I placed out my pre-cut squares from the day before, and readied my egg wash.


After filling a few of them, I looked at my bundle of handmade ravs and I was really proud. They honestly do look like raviolis. The only question now was... Do they taste like raviolis? So I took one lonely ravioli and dropped him in my pot of salted boiling water to be my taste tester.


Meanwhile, I still proceeded to spit out more and more raviolis. These were definitely the weak links of the bunch. These sad looking ravs ended up not joining their friends and were dropped into the garbage bin.


After my lonely taste tester rose to the top of the water, I took him out and began to examine him. He appeared to look and feel like a ravioli, but he seemed to be a bit more on the really al dente side.


Yup, just as I expected- he's too al dente. The dough was just too thick. I figured if I let the rest of them boil for a bit longer, that would at least help them out. But I knew I had to make my dough a lot thinner for my next batch of raviolis.


So I boiled my first batch of ravioli extra long, because they were the thick ones. But my next batch, seen here, came out a lot better because I rolled the dough out extra thin.


Okay so they're better now, but they're not perfect. I couldn't get the filling as well stuffed as I wanted, and there was definitely too much hanging pasta dough around the edges.


While I was preparing the raviolis, I asked my mom to make a white wine sauce for me because I didn't have enough time to finish everything before dinner. Her sauce was actually very tasty, and I only wish that I made it myself.


My parents told me that the filling tasted delicious, and that the pasta dough was fine but it was just too thick. Now I know for the future to roll it out as thin as possible and to also fill them as much as possible. But that is, if I ever do decide to make pasta dough again (which is probably not likely). We saved the remaining mushroom-ricotta-filling in case we wanted to do something else with it.

---RECIPE---
Ravioli filling taken from Evil Shenanigans.

ingredients:
1 cup ricotta cheese
1 tablespoon olive oil
4 ounces crimini mushrooms, chopped (I used bella mushrooms, and I wouldn't know if I used 4 ounces or not)
1/2 cup chopped yellow onion
2 cloves garlic, minced
Salt and pepper
1/4 cup parmesan cheese

directions:
1. Heat the olive oil in a pan over medium heat. Once it shimmers add the onions and cook until they soften, about five minutes. Add the mushrooms and cook until the excess liquid has evaporated and the mushrooms have reduced in volume, about eight minutes. Add the garlic and cook for thirty seconds. Remove the pan from the heat to cool slightly.
2. In a bowl add the ricotta, salt, pepper, and parmesan cheese. Stir in the mushrooms. Cover and chill while you make the pasta.