As mentioned in Day 67 of The Challenge
This was a pre-night shift dinner for me by my husband and went over very well with all of us, including Little One who has started making definite preferences known. It is a bit of a multi-step process, but so worth it! Warm and filling, it is the ultimate comfort food.
Ingredients:
2 eggs
500 g of ziti, penne or other tubular pasta
1 head of garlic, crushed
2 tbsp olive oil
2 tins (800g) tomatoes
2 c (800g) of cottage cheese
600g mozzarella, shredded
1 c milk
1 tsp sugar
2 tsp basil
2 tsp oregano
3/4 tsp cornstarch
1/2 c red cooking wine
Salt and pepper to taste
1) Heat olive oil with garlic in a heavy bottomed sauce pan, allowing the garlic to infuse gently. Add tomatoes and wine and bring to a simmer. Add basil and oregano.
2) Once the sauce has thickened, add the sugar.
3) Beat eggs, and add cottage cheese and half the mozzarella to them, whisking again.
4) Cook pasta 3/4 of the way there - it still must have some bite to it as it will continue cooking in the oven! Put in a casserole dish and set aside.
5) In a saucepan, combine cornstarch and milk, stirring and heating slowly until they thicken, then remove from the heat.
6) Add the cottage cheese mixture and 1 c of tomato sauce to the milk mix. Add this resulting triple mix to the pasta and stir well to coat all of those little tubes in gooey goodness.
7) Mix remaining tomato sauce with the pasta gooey-ness, and stir in the mozzarella to melt through.
8) Bake at 180°C for 45 minutes until the top is golden (and has a few crispy bits as these are amazing!)
So tasty, and almost better as leftovers. I definitely recommend this. Hubby's been promising/threatening to make this for years, and never having even heard of this until he mentioned it, I had no idea what to expect. I was pleasantly surprised, to say the least, and (after the challenge) this will be making it into regular rotation!
