Mama mia.... mangia! mangia!

This has been a busy time. I have just recovered from Bob the Builder mania, and another exciting event is on the horizon. Turns out that both my in-laws, and my parents are celebrating their 40th anniversary one week apart at the beginning of July. Being the thoughtful children we are (who really owe their parents big time for a positively ENDLESS list of wonderful things they have done and continue to do for us), my sister, hubby and I are throwing a little bash (by little I mean no more than 30 guests) outside at the farm. Thank goodness for my sister's beautiful farm.

I like planning these things. I like cooking for these things. On the menu, a buffet meal of Italian sausages, BBQ chicken thighs, salads, antipasti, veggies and fruit and my specialty.... baked Ziti. For you mangia cakes, baked ziti is a baked pasta dish, covered in cheese and creamy béchamel sauce. Sort of like lasagna without all the work and layers. As a pure blood Italian, with incredibly Italian relatives, it is hard to find any kind of pasta dish that elicits any kind of response. This is a tough crowd- they've been raised on pasta. Utero, breast milk, pasta. That's the order food is introduced to an Italian baby. Except when babies eat it, we call it "pastina"- little pasta. Never mind mashed peas. Or rice cereal. And yet, I have never once made this dish to an indifferent response. There are well--developed palettes each time I serve this who go for seconds. It is wonderful. The beauty of this is it is easy, so easy, and it is also easy to serve an army. Bake it in foil pans that can be thrown out and it is easily one of the lowest maintenance dishes ever.

Rachael Ray gives us the overall bones of this dish here:
http://www.rachaelrayshow.com/food/recipes/neapolitan-baked-ziti

I use that recipe, but I do my own thing in a couple of ways. First off, kudos to Ms. Ray for advocating making your own pasta sauce. Why in the world do more people not make their own sauce??? It is the easiest thing to do, and it is so much better than your store bought mangia cake variety (For those of you unfamiliar with this term, "mangia-cake" is the Italian term which is roughly equivalent to "gringo"). I am a firm believer that it is far better to know exactly what is in the food you eat- better to put it there yourself. Pasta sauce is as varied as those who make it. I swear, no two cooks can make the exact same sauce. It is impossible- sort of like licking your elbow (try it- that's impossible too!). I learned how to make sauce from my mum, who learned from her mum, and all three of us make sauce that does not taste the same. All of it is really good, but without question, Nonna Giacomina's is the best by a long shot (I think mum would agree). But everything that Nonna makes tastes better than anything else in the world. The taste and smell of pasta sauce is so completely tied into memory for me. We were at my cousin's in Victoria once and they served pasta, made with my Auntie Mimi's sauce and I almost started to cry. It smelled and tasted so much like my Nonna Francis' sauce, my Nonna who passed away when I was 12. It was amazing how quickly that sense kicked in. 


I currently have an enormous vat of sauce simmering on the stove as we speak. My sauce tastes as it does out of necessity. I now call to order the PFEASG... the Parent of Finicky Eaters Anonymous Support Group. All members present? Meeting called to order. My kids will eat pasta. They will eat pasta under duress, most of the time, but sometimes, when the moon is in the 7th house and Jupiter aligns with Mars, they will eat it as if it is the best thing in the world. They will also eat mini pizzas- made from my pasta sauce and English muffins, under duress but nonetheless, they will choke it down. It occurred to me, that I can be an alchemist... I can turn any vegetable into pasta sauce and my kids will never know. It is time consuming to make pasta sauce this way, so when I do it, I go big or go home, and freeze the stuff in a million containers. Often, I will freeze it in ice cube trays so it is simple to pull out individual servings when my children reject the meal I have prepared on a given night. Heaven help us that we should all consume the same thing happily. Here's what I do: 


1) In a frying pan on medium heat, heat olive oil and saute:  diced celery, grated carrot, chopped mushrooms, grated zucchini, diced red pepper, grated garlic, diced onion. Cook until soft. For you carnivores out there, and for the love of the land, don't do this if you are serving to vegetarians, here's an extra tip. When I make French beef dip sandwiches, or rouladen, I always freeze the juices. I will add the juices (about a 1/4 - 1/2 cup or so) to this veggie mix. The flavour is unbeatable. 
2) I get out my lovely magician's assistant, the blender, and throw the veggie mix in there, and puree the snot out of it until the vegetables are completely unidentifiable and liquified. The key word here fellow member of the PFEASG, is UNIDENTIFIABLE. Nothing should remain that could be perceived as a "chunk, string or.... worst of all... a lump". Leaving any of the above will only result in a stand-off. One which you will never win. Trust me. My arm is sore from waving my damned white flag. 
3) Next, in the same frying pan I heat some more olive oil, and cook a small package of ground beef. Clearly, if you are vegetarian, skip this step. But, in my effort to get some protein into my kids, there it is. 
4) Using the good old Oster blender, I puree the stink out of this too, so that no "brown" can be picked out by wee fingers. 
5) Pour all these purees into a LARGE pot. The bigger the better. This will all be a nasty brown colour. This will never do. Next you must add enough tomatoes to turn the thing red. What kind of tomatoes? My dad's homegrown, mum canned are the best. But since you all don't have VIP access to that like I do (remember that endless list I referred to in a previous paragraph?), canned tomatoes work just fine. I use a combination of crushed and stewed, until I have a consistency I'm happy with. That is a question of personal taste. 
6) Spice this and let it simmer. What spices? In the words of Nonna "put all-a the spicy you like...". Oregano, basil, thyme, no brainers. Bay leaves, also good. Just be sure to dig them out before feeding it to your finicky family member or you are dead in the water. The only thing worse than something "brown" in the pasta sauce is something.... dare I say it?... GREEN. Porca miseria. 
7) Don't forget salt and pepper. Sometimes I find if I've used a lot of red pepper, there is a bit of acidity that I'm not fond of. A tablespoon or two of sugar takes care of that- but be careful, the fastest way to make it taste mangia-cake is to over sweeten. Don't do that.  
8) Simmer until it tastes done. You'll know it when you get there. Top to tail, this process takes me about 1.5 to 2 hours, but the amount of sauce that I make will last about 3 months. PLUS it is dirt cheap to do this yourself.


Meeting adjourned. 


Back to baked ziti. Other things that help knock this out of the park are: 
1) use Cacciocavallo cheese (made by Saputo, it is sort of like mozzarella but with a fantastic smoky flavour and it melts beautifully). 
2) Slightly undercook the noodles so that they don't mushify (that's a verb right?) when you bake the pasta. 
3) I like a rigati pasta (with ridges) because it holds sauce so nicely. Come to think of it, I almost never use ziti for this dish- mostly penne because it is easier to find. 
4) Use plenty of red sauce so that it doesn't dry out in the oven. 
5) Mix a bit of cacciocavallo into the béchamel sauce because you just can't get enough. Also, don't use milk, use cream. Because this is worth the extra weight watchers points. Trust me on that. 


It's a hit. And it is so easy. And if you bring this to your annual neighbourhood block party, it will go over well. Trust me. 


Happy trails!