Baked Ziti

We love Italian food. If we have a date night, typically we end up at our favorite Italian restaurant in town - Angelo's. Yum. I try not to make a habit of cooking pasta too often, but even when I do, I use wheat pasta most of the time so I don't feel quite so bad about it.

Tonight I tried the baked ziti recipe that I found on Amber's Delectible Delights (love her blog!). I modified it a bit - I didn't use cottage/ricotta cheese. We aren't fans of it so I just doubled the mozzerella. Also, I didn't have any penne pasta, so I used wheat rotini. We both agreed that this one is really good and we have leftovers for our lunch tomorrow - bonus!

Ingredients

1 box (16 oz) Ziti pasta1 jar spaghetti sauce

1/2 lb ground beef (I used ground turkey)
1/2 lb pork sausage

Salt, black pepper, garlic, red pepper flakes (all to taste)

12 oz cottage cheese (or ricotta if you prefer)

1/2 cup (4 oz) mozzarella cheese

1/4 cup grated Parmesan Cheese

8 slices provolone cheese

Directions

Preheat oven to 350 and grease the bottom and sides of a 9 x 13 casserole dish.- Bring a large pot of water to a boil, season water with salt, boil pasta till al dente; drain and set aside.- Meanwhile brown sausage and ground beef in skillet and season with desired amounts of salt, black pepper, garlic and red pepper flakes. Drain excess grease away from meats and return back to skillet. Add the jar of spaghetti sauce and let simmer until you are ready to assemble the dish.- Place enough sauce mixture on the bottom of the pan so the noodles won't stick. Then assemble the rest of the dish- half of the cooked noodles, all of the cottage cheese, 4 slices of provolone cheese, 1/2 of the remaining sauce, remaining noodles, half of the mozzarella and Parmesan cheese, remaining sauce, remaining cheese.- Bake at 350 degrees for 30 minutes or until cheese is melted and bubbly. Let set 10 minutes to cool before serving.

Recipe from Amber's Delectible Delights, picture from my kitchen