Recipe Wednesday

Recipe Wednesday

This week I decided to make a casserole.  It turned out good, and of course I adapted the recipe to my own taste I chose to make an Italian Pasta Bake.  It is really quite tasty, not hard to make, and keeps well. 

Ok, so obviously this is NOT my picture, but it looked very similar to this one!  My lighting for my pictures of my bake was not good...so sorry! 

Here's the recipe!  I used whole wheat pasta, and it wasn't ziti, but it was tube shaped like those are.  Rotini maybe?  And I did not have any turkey italian sausage, so I used ground turkey.  I think it would have been really good with turkey sausage though! 

Italian Pasta Bake

Ingredients

1 (1-pound) package uncooked ziti (short tube-shaped pasta)
1 pound hot turkey Italian sausage links
1 cup chopped onion
2 garlic cloves, minced
1 tablespoon tomato paste
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon black pepper
2 (14.5-ounce) cans petite-diced tomatoes, undrained
1/4 cup chopped fresh basil
Cooking spray
1 cup (4 ounces) shredded fresh mozzarella cheese
1 cup (4 ounces) grated fresh Parmesan cheese


Preparation
Preheat oven to 350°.
Cook pasta according to package directions, omitting salt and fat. Drain the pasta, and set aside.

Remove casings from sausage. Cook sausage, onion, and garlic in a large nonstick skillet over medium heat until browned, stirring to crumble. Add the tomato paste, salt, pepper, and tomatoes, and bring to a boil. Cover, reduce heat, and simmer 10 minutes, stirring occasionally.

Combine cooked pasta, sausage mixture, and basil. Place half of the pasta mixture in a 4-quart casserole coated with cooking spray. Top with half of mozzarella and half of Parmesan. Repeat layers. Bake at 350° for 25 minutes or until bubbly.

I had a request to make a certain recipe for next week, so I think I will give it a try...if you have a recipe you want me to try leave a comment and I will see what I can do!