The Art of Baked Ziti: A Tradition Reimagined

As we embark on this culinary journey, it's clear that our author is passionate about creating the perfect baked ziti. The dish has been elevated from its humble beginnings to a work of art, with each ingredient carefully selected and prepared to create a truly exceptional culinary experience.

One of the key elements in this recipe is the use of aluminum foil as a cover for the casserole. This may seem like an unconventional choice, but our author explains that it allows the pasta to cook evenly and prevents the cheese from drying out. As we proceed with the recipe, it becomes clear that attention to detail is paramount.

The base layer of ziti is spread evenly over the bottom of the casserole, followed by a generous helping of ricotta cheese. Our author insists on spreading this sauce as evenly as possible, ensuring that every bite is filled with flavor and texture. The mozzarella cheese is then sprinkled over top, adding a creamy richness to the dish.

Next, our author adds a layer of grated parmesan cheese, which they claim makes all the difference in achieving an authentic Italian flavor. This is followed by the addition of two cups of gravy, carefully poured over the pasta to create a rich and savory sauce. A final sprinkling of parmesan cheese completes this layer, adding a satisfying crunch to each bite.

Now, our author takes a bold step forward by using rigatoni instead of ziti, citing the ridges on the pasta as a key feature that helps it hold onto the sauce and meat. This is followed by a crucial decision: to use low-moisture full-fat mozzarella cheese, which melts beautifully without adding extra liquid to the dish.

The real showstopper in this recipe is the addition of cottage cheese, which adds a creamy texture to the pasta. Our author recommends mixing it with eggs and grated parmesan cheese for added richness. A pinch of freshly grated nutmeg adds an unexpected layer of depth to the dish, recalling the old-school flavors of Italy.

Finally, our author introduces a bechamel sauce, carefully whisking together butter, flour, and milk to create a thick and creamy base for the pasta. This is then combined with the cottage cheese mixture, creating a rich and velvety sauce that coats each bite.

The finishing touches are applied as we top the casserole with cubed mozzarella cheese, followed by an additional sprinkle of parmesan cheese for good measure. As our author notes, this may seem like too much cheese, but trust us – it's worth every last bite.

With this recipe complete, our author presents a bold challenge: to take the traditional baked ziti and turn it on its head. By using rigatoni instead of ziti, low-moisture mozzarella, and cottage cheese, they create a dish that is both innovative and authentic. The result is a culinary masterpiece that showcases the beauty of creative cooking.

One cannot help but be impressed by our author's dedication to this recipe, from the carefully measured ingredients to the exacting technique required to prepare each layer. This is not just a meal – it's an art form, crafted with love and care to create a truly unforgettable experience. Whether you're a seasoned chef or a culinary novice, this baked ziti recipe has something for everyone.

In the end, our author concludes that this dish is not only delicious but also authentic – a testament to their passion for Italian cuisine. The use of cottage cheese adds an unexpected twist to traditional pasta dishes, while the bechamel sauce and low-moisture mozzarella bring a creamy richness to each bite. It's clear that carmella did not make this ziti – our author is the true mastermind behind this culinary creation.

As we finish our article, it's clear that the art of baked ziti has been elevated to new heights. Whether you're looking for an authentic Italian dish or a creative twist on a classic recipe, our author's take on this beloved pasta dish is sure to impress.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enis that sausage my mom made it with hamburger see she made lasagna the other night delicious with sweet sausage along with the beef i thought karen's was good but sweet sausage in little pieces and a layer of basil leaves right underneath the cheese that's right that's camilla's lasagna you're talking about hey what's up guys welcome back to binging with babish where this week we're finally taking a look at some of kharam's specialties from the sopranos the secret ingredient of which seems to be a layer of basil underneath the cheese curious to see how that works out today we're making both ziti and lasagna so we need to make a lot of sauce i got this recipe directly from the entertaining with the sopranos cookbook so it's pretty standard stuff we need one large chopped onion six cloves of crushed garlic and a pound each ground beef and sweet italian sausage casings removed and of course a bunch of tomatoes and since i need a lot of sauce i'm quadrupling all this stuff gonna have to lose the usual dutch oven here because it's time to break out the big boy into which we are gonna deposit a few healthy glugs of extra virgin olive oil bring that to a shimmer over medium heat add our onion sweat that guy out till it's soft and translucent and then add our crushed garlic sauteing for an additional minute until fragrant the recipe specifies adding the sausage and beef at this point with the onions but that just doesn't make any sense to me so i'm setting the onions and garlic aside and browning up our sausage and beef in batches until it's nice and crumbly and brown then i'm going to drain off most of the fat add the onions and garlic back to the pot and add our tomatoes 4 28 ounce cans of san marzano tomatoes lightly crushed add our brown beef and sausage back to the party stir to combine and then we're also going to fill one of our tomato cans with water and dump it into the sauce this sauce stands to lose a lot of moisture during the one and a half hours it's about to spend on the stove top we're going to cover this guy up and bring him to a rolling so boy that's too much of a simmer easy baby once your sauce a little bit more calm down we're going to partially cover reduce the heat way down low about as low as your stove will go and keep this just barely bubbling stirring occasionally to make sure that nobody's scorching on the bottom of the pot for one and one half hours until the flavors are deep and sweet and melded and complex make sure you scrape down all this good stuff off the side of the pot too it's essentially tomato paste and it's gonna help amp up the flavor of the sauce a little bit then during the last five minutes of cooking we are adding a bunch of chopped basil as well as seasoning to taste with kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper all in all this is a totally serviceable italian meat sauce i can only think of a couple things that i would do differently those are adding a few tablespoons of tomato paste to the onions and garlic before adding the tomatoes and letting the sauce simmer with both a parmesan cheese rind and a whole stem of basil either way we're going to transfer this over to another vessel because this pot is perfect for boiling pasta lasagna noodles in particular because they can be a bit finicky to cook one of the central tenets of lasagna making is to make sure that you wildly undercook your pasta you want it to be almost crunchy which means no more than four minutes in the boiling water and then immediately removing into a pot or bowl of nice cool water to halt the cooking then just like my mama used to do we're laying these out onto a lint-free kitchen towel and setting those aside so is that we can begin assembly let's get our nice warm sauce off the stovetop and then i'm going to use an aluminum foil lasagna pan so janice can steal it and pass it off as her own first we're going to start with a healthy layer of sauce we don't want any noodles sticking to the bottom of the pan and then it's time to start shingling in our pasta depending on the size of your pasta and the size of your pan some surgery may be required to fill in all the gaps but no matter just try to flip the pattern every layer to maintain the lasagna's structural integrity next up the recipe calls for a generous spread of ricotta a lasagna ingredient to which i am personally opposed but who am i to a shoe tradition followed by a healthy grating maybe half an ounce of parmesan cheese and then here we go with the layer of basil leaves i'm very curious to see how this is going to work out because not only does it seem like a lot of basil i also see it causing cutting issues down the line carm then tops this up with a layer of thinly sliced fresh mozzarella cheese again something i can't totally recommend because there's a lot of moisture in this and it might give us a soupy lasagna top that with another layer of sauce and then it's time to rinse and repeat until we can't rinse and repeat no more all told i got three full layers which seems respectable and then on the final layer we're just gonna hit it with a generous coating of tomato sauce and a generous grating of parmesan cheese this is something i never really understood about old school lasagna recipes which never seem to include mozzarella on top which i think makes the lasagna easier to cut down the line i'm also just going to hit this with a little bit of salt and freshly ground pepper i don't think this is totally necessary but i'm gonna go ahead and pretend that it's traditional then we're gonna cover this guy tightly with aluminum foil and place in a 350 degree fahrenheit oven for 30 minutes this is going to give the lasagna noodles time to finish cooking and get everybody melty and happy then we're going to uncover and place back in the oven for 15 to 30 minutes until it's browned and bubbly on top and i gotta say this looks exactly like how i always imagined garfield's lasagna looked so whoops wrong episode either way we're letting this sit for at least 15 minutes before digging in and as predicted we've got some basil leaf interference here but no matter because this is a pretty solidly stacked lasagna and as it turns out there's absolutely no such thing as too much basil i just kind of wish it was chopped up and mixed up with the ricotta or something so it's a little bit more evenly dispersed and less intrusive in my lasagna consumption if you want to see the badass from scratch brad leone and babish style lasagna go check out my garfield lasagna video in the upper right hand corner right now because otherwise we're on to making ziti the oft disgust but rarely seen carmella's specialty first up we're cooking a pound of ziti to very al dente about five minutes tops extracting into a large bowl and tossing with a cup or two of gravy give that a nice mixeroo and then it's time to negotiate our cheese everybody who's anybody loves little chunks of mozzarella in their baked ziti so that's what we're gonna do another aluminum casserole because all this stuff is going to neighbors and friends so i don't die spread half of the sauce ziti over the bottom of the casserole and then we're gonna top that up with some gobs of ricotta again i must object but we are going for accuracy here spread that out as evenly as possible and then sprinkle our half inch chunks of fresh mozzarella over top we are then going to top that up with a generous grating of parmesan cheese maybe ounce ounce and half's worth the remaining half of our ziti which we're going to spread out nice and even make sure that none of that cheese is exposed to oxygen then we're going to top the whole thing off with another cup or two of gravy nothing is sadder in this world than under sauced fake ziti and lastly another ounce or so of grated parmesan until it looks like a nice light snowfall and then it's the exact same process as before we're covering tightly with aluminum foil and placing in a 350 degree fahrenheit oven for 30 minutes removing and unwrapping so we can expose all that cheese and pasta to the loving warmth of the oven and placing back inside for 15 to 20 minutes until it looks like this browned and bubbly and crispy and saucy and happy now again this recipe makes a perfectly serviceable baked ziti i'm almost less opposed to the parmesan only topping because we're scooping instead of slicing so a crispy crunchy top is actually nice and welcome the sauce is delicious the cheese is delicious the pasta's delicious the ricotta is okay we got ourselves a winner and an obvious member of the clean plate club but can we do better and the answer is yes by simply flying in the face of all tradition my first atrocity to use rigatoni instead of ziti i like the ridges which help grab onto the sauce and little bits of meat and help make each bite a little bit more inclusive next up the mozzarella instead of fresh we're going to use low moisture full fat this stuff melts up beautifully without pissing a bunch of extra liquid into our pasta alforno next up and this is the really crazy one here 16 ounces of cottage cheese cottage cheese gets super creamy instead of grainy when baked up so it's gonna be really nice to that we're gonna add two whole eggs and about two ounces of grated parmesan cheese i'm also gonna add some optional freshly grated nutmeg this is going to add some really beautiful nutty old-school italian flavor give that a cursory mix together and then comes the basil chopped up into little bite-sized pieces to maximize both flavor and mouth convenience add that to our cheese mixer give it a good normal size whisking and then the final and i think most awesome element a bechamel which i think you could add to any one of the recipes today because it's gonna make our end product super creamy and rich into a medium saucepan goes three tablespoons of butter melted followed by three tablespoons of flour whisk together and cooked for one minute before slowly streaming in two cups of milk whisking constantly and cooking for an additional one to two minutes until a thick creamy bechamel forms and then it's time to bring it all together into the pasta goes a couple cups of gravy our beautiful bechamel sauce and our cottage cheese egg parmesan and basil mixture give that a nice little mix until everybody's homogenous and a little bit cooled off so we can add eight ounces of cubed low moisture mozzarella just give that a little mix until everybody's evenly dispersed throughout and then evacuate into our aluminum pan thing i've run out of things to call it make sure everybody's spread out evenly and top with one to two cups of extra gravy and then i'm going to top that with half a pound of shredded mozzarella which will hopefully melt into one nice even layer and then i'm gonna top that with another ounce of grated parmesan did somebody just say that's too much cheese i'm gonna go ahead and ask you to leave same exact procedure as before cover 350 oven 30 minutes take out unwrap put back an oven 15-20 minutes lightly brown bubbly around the edges and if you ask me looking absolutely perfect but you don't judge a ziti by its topmost layer or a rigatoni in this case either way this is the best pasta alfono that i've ever had in my 32 years the pasta is perfectly cooked with an almost vodka sauce-like creaminess to it the flavors are complex and layered it's a good thing carmella didn't make this ziti because otherwise father phil might have been a lot harder to get rid of next up some of artibuco's recipes from vesuvio youis that sausage my mom made it with hamburger see she made lasagna the other night delicious with sweet sausage along with the beef i thought karen's was good but sweet sausage in little pieces and a layer of basil leaves right underneath the cheese that's right that's camilla's lasagna you're talking about hey what's up guys welcome back to binging with babish where this week we're finally taking a look at some of kharam's specialties from the sopranos the secret ingredient of which seems to be a layer of basil underneath the cheese curious to see how that works out today we're making both ziti and lasagna so we need to make a lot of sauce i got this recipe directly from the entertaining with the sopranos cookbook so it's pretty standard stuff we need one large chopped onion six cloves of crushed garlic and a pound each ground beef and sweet italian sausage casings removed and of course a bunch of tomatoes and since i need a lot of sauce i'm quadrupling all this stuff gonna have to lose the usual dutch oven here because it's time to break out the big boy into which we are gonna deposit a few healthy glugs of extra virgin olive oil bring that to a shimmer over medium heat add our onion sweat that guy out till it's soft and translucent and then add our crushed garlic sauteing for an additional minute until fragrant the recipe specifies adding the sausage and beef at this point with the onions but that just doesn't make any sense to me so i'm setting the onions and garlic aside and browning up our sausage and beef in batches until it's nice and crumbly and brown then i'm going to drain off most of the fat add the onions and garlic back to the pot and add our tomatoes 4 28 ounce cans of san marzano tomatoes lightly crushed add our brown beef and sausage back to the party stir to combine and then we're also going to fill one of our tomato cans with water and dump it into the sauce this sauce stands to lose a lot of moisture during the one and a half hours it's about to spend on the stove top we're going to cover this guy up and bring him to a rolling so boy that's too much of a simmer easy baby once your sauce a little bit more calm down we're going to partially cover reduce the heat way down low about as low as your stove will go and keep this just barely bubbling stirring occasionally to make sure that nobody's scorching on the bottom of the pot for one and one half hours until the flavors are deep and sweet and melded and complex make sure you scrape down all this good stuff off the side of the pot too it's essentially tomato paste and it's gonna help amp up the flavor of the sauce a little bit then during the last five minutes of cooking we are adding a bunch of chopped basil as well as seasoning to taste with kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper all in all this is a totally serviceable italian meat sauce i can only think of a couple things that i would do differently those are adding a few tablespoons of tomato paste to the onions and garlic before adding the tomatoes and letting the sauce simmer with both a parmesan cheese rind and a whole stem of basil either way we're going to transfer this over to another vessel because this pot is perfect for boiling pasta lasagna noodles in particular because they can be a bit finicky to cook one of the central tenets of lasagna making is to make sure that you wildly undercook your pasta you want it to be almost crunchy which means no more than four minutes in the boiling water and then immediately removing into a pot or bowl of nice cool water to halt the cooking then just like my mama used to do we're laying these out onto a lint-free kitchen towel and setting those aside so is that we can begin assembly let's get our nice warm sauce off the stovetop and then i'm going to use an aluminum foil lasagna pan so janice can steal it and pass it off as her own first we're going to start with a healthy layer of sauce we don't want any noodles sticking to the bottom of the pan and then it's time to start shingling in our pasta depending on the size of your pasta and the size of your pan some surgery may be required to fill in all the gaps but no matter just try to flip the pattern every layer to maintain the lasagna's structural integrity next up the recipe calls for a generous spread of ricotta a lasagna ingredient to which i am personally opposed but who am i to a shoe tradition followed by a healthy grating maybe half an ounce of parmesan cheese and then here we go with the layer of basil leaves i'm very curious to see how this is going to work out because not only does it seem like a lot of basil i also see it causing cutting issues down the line carm then tops this up with a layer of thinly sliced fresh mozzarella cheese again something i can't totally recommend because there's a lot of moisture in this and it might give us a soupy lasagna top that with another layer of sauce and then it's time to rinse and repeat until we can't rinse and repeat no more all told i got three full layers which seems respectable and then on the final layer we're just gonna hit it with a generous coating of tomato sauce and a generous grating of parmesan cheese this is something i never really understood about old school lasagna recipes which never seem to include mozzarella on top which i think makes the lasagna easier to cut down the line i'm also just going to hit this with a little bit of salt and freshly ground pepper i don't think this is totally necessary but i'm gonna go ahead and pretend that it's traditional then we're gonna cover this guy tightly with aluminum foil and place in a 350 degree fahrenheit oven for 30 minutes this is going to give the lasagna noodles time to finish cooking and get everybody melty and happy then we're going to uncover and place back in the oven for 15 to 30 minutes until it's browned and bubbly on top and i gotta say this looks exactly like how i always imagined garfield's lasagna looked so whoops wrong episode either way we're letting this sit for at least 15 minutes before digging in and as predicted we've got some basil leaf interference here but no matter because this is a pretty solidly stacked lasagna and as it turns out there's absolutely no such thing as too much basil i just kind of wish it was chopped up and mixed up with the ricotta or something so it's a little bit more evenly dispersed and less intrusive in my lasagna consumption if you want to see the badass from scratch brad leone and babish style lasagna go check out my garfield lasagna video in the upper right hand corner right now because otherwise we're on to making ziti the oft disgust but rarely seen carmella's specialty first up we're cooking a pound of ziti to very al dente about five minutes tops extracting into a large bowl and tossing with a cup or two of gravy give that a nice mixeroo and then it's time to negotiate our cheese everybody who's anybody loves little chunks of mozzarella in their baked ziti so that's what we're gonna do another aluminum casserole because all this stuff is going to neighbors and friends so i don't die spread half of the sauce ziti over the bottom of the casserole and then we're gonna top that up with some gobs of ricotta again i must object but we are going for accuracy here spread that out as evenly as possible and then sprinkle our half inch chunks of fresh mozzarella over top we are then going to top that up with a generous grating of parmesan cheese maybe ounce ounce and half's worth the remaining half of our ziti which we're going to spread out nice and even make sure that none of that cheese is exposed to oxygen then we're going to top the whole thing off with another cup or two of gravy nothing is sadder in this world than under sauced fake ziti and lastly another ounce or so of grated parmesan until it looks like a nice light snowfall and then it's the exact same process as before we're covering tightly with aluminum foil and placing in a 350 degree fahrenheit oven for 30 minutes removing and unwrapping so we can expose all that cheese and pasta to the loving warmth of the oven and placing back inside for 15 to 20 minutes until it looks like this browned and bubbly and crispy and saucy and happy now again this recipe makes a perfectly serviceable baked ziti i'm almost less opposed to the parmesan only topping because we're scooping instead of slicing so a crispy crunchy top is actually nice and welcome the sauce is delicious the cheese is delicious the pasta's delicious the ricotta is okay we got ourselves a winner and an obvious member of the clean plate club but can we do better and the answer is yes by simply flying in the face of all tradition my first atrocity to use rigatoni instead of ziti i like the ridges which help grab onto the sauce and little bits of meat and help make each bite a little bit more inclusive next up the mozzarella instead of fresh we're going to use low moisture full fat this stuff melts up beautifully without pissing a bunch of extra liquid into our pasta alforno next up and this is the really crazy one here 16 ounces of cottage cheese cottage cheese gets super creamy instead of grainy when baked up so it's gonna be really nice to that we're gonna add two whole eggs and about two ounces of grated parmesan cheese i'm also gonna add some optional freshly grated nutmeg this is going to add some really beautiful nutty old-school italian flavor give that a cursory mix together and then comes the basil chopped up into little bite-sized pieces to maximize both flavor and mouth convenience add that to our cheese mixer give it a good normal size whisking and then the final and i think most awesome element a bechamel which i think you could add to any one of the recipes today because it's gonna make our end product super creamy and rich into a medium saucepan goes three tablespoons of butter melted followed by three tablespoons of flour whisk together and cooked for one minute before slowly streaming in two cups of milk whisking constantly and cooking for an additional one to two minutes until a thick creamy bechamel forms and then it's time to bring it all together into the pasta goes a couple cups of gravy our beautiful bechamel sauce and our cottage cheese egg parmesan and basil mixture give that a nice little mix until everybody's homogenous and a little bit cooled off so we can add eight ounces of cubed low moisture mozzarella just give that a little mix until everybody's evenly dispersed throughout and then evacuate into our aluminum pan thing i've run out of things to call it make sure everybody's spread out evenly and top with one to two cups of extra gravy and then i'm going to top that with half a pound of shredded mozzarella which will hopefully melt into one nice even layer and then i'm gonna top that with another ounce of grated parmesan did somebody just say that's too much cheese i'm gonna go ahead and ask you to leave same exact procedure as before cover 350 oven 30 minutes take out unwrap put back an oven 15-20 minutes lightly brown bubbly around the edges and if you ask me looking absolutely perfect but you don't judge a ziti by its topmost layer or a rigatoni in this case either way this is the best pasta alfono that i've ever had in my 32 years the pasta is perfectly cooked with an almost vodka sauce-like creaminess to it the flavors are complex and layered it's a good thing carmella didn't make this ziti because otherwise father phil might have been a lot harder to get rid of next up some of artibuco's recipes from vesuvio youis that sausage my mom made it with hamburger see she made lasagna the other night delicious with sweet sausage along with the beef i thought karen's was good but sweet sausage in little pieces and a layer of basil leaves right underneath the cheese that's right that's camilla's lasagna you're talking about hey what's up guys welcome back to binging with babish where this week we're finally taking a look at some of kharam's specialties from the sopranos the secret ingredient of which seems to be a layer of basil underneath the cheese curious to see how that works out today we're making both ziti and lasagna so we need to make a lot of sauce i got this recipe directly from the entertaining with the sopranos cookbook so it's pretty standard stuff we need one large chopped onion six cloves of crushed garlic and a pound each ground beef and sweet italian sausage casings removed and of course a bunch of tomatoes and since i need a lot of sauce i'm quadrupling all this stuff gonna have to lose the usual dutch oven here because it's time to break out the big boy into which we are gonna deposit a few healthy glugs of extra virgin olive oil bring that to a shimmer over medium heat add our onion sweat that guy out till it's soft and translucent and then add our crushed garlic sauteing for an additional minute until fragrant the recipe specifies adding the sausage and beef at this point with the onions but that just doesn't make any sense to me so i'm setting the onions and garlic aside and browning up our sausage and beef in batches until it's nice and crumbly and brown then i'm going to drain off most of the fat add the onions and garlic back to the pot and add our tomatoes 4 28 ounce cans of san marzano tomatoes lightly crushed add our brown beef and sausage back to the party stir to combine and then we're also going to fill one of our tomato cans with water and dump it into the sauce this sauce stands to lose a lot of moisture during the one and a half hours it's about to spend on the stove top we're going to cover this guy up and bring him to a rolling so boy that's too much of a simmer easy baby once your sauce a little bit more calm down we're going to partially cover reduce the heat way down low about as low as your stove will go and keep this just barely bubbling stirring occasionally to make sure that nobody's scorching on the bottom of the pot for one and one half hours until the flavors are deep and sweet and melded and complex make sure you scrape down all this good stuff off the side of the pot too it's essentially tomato paste and it's gonna help amp up the flavor of the sauce a little bit then during the last five minutes of cooking we are adding a bunch of chopped basil as well as seasoning to taste with kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper all in all this is a totally serviceable italian meat sauce i can only think of a couple things that i would do differently those are adding a few tablespoons of tomato paste to the onions and garlic before adding the tomatoes and letting the sauce simmer with both a parmesan cheese rind and a whole stem of basil either way we're going to transfer this over to another vessel because this pot is perfect for boiling pasta lasagna noodles in particular because they can be a bit finicky to cook one of the central tenets of lasagna making is to make sure that you wildly undercook your pasta you want it to be almost crunchy which means no more than four minutes in the boiling water and then immediately removing into a pot or bowl of nice cool water to halt the cooking then just like my mama used to do we're laying these out onto a lint-free kitchen towel and setting those aside so is that we can begin assembly let's get our nice warm sauce off the stovetop and then i'm going to use an aluminum foil lasagna pan so janice can steal it and pass it off as her own first we're going to start with a healthy layer of sauce we don't want any noodles sticking to the bottom of the pan and then it's time to start shingling in our pasta depending on the size of your pasta and the size of your pan some surgery may be required to fill in all the gaps but no matter just try to flip the pattern every layer to maintain the lasagna's structural integrity next up the recipe calls for a generous spread of ricotta a lasagna ingredient to which i am personally opposed but who am i to a shoe tradition followed by a healthy grating maybe half an ounce of parmesan cheese and then here we go with the layer of basil leaves i'm very curious to see how this is going to work out because not only does it seem like a lot of basil i also see it causing cutting issues down the line carm then tops this up with a layer of thinly sliced fresh mozzarella cheese again something i can't totally recommend because there's a lot of moisture in this and it might give us a soupy lasagna top that with another layer of sauce and then it's time to rinse and repeat until we can't rinse and repeat no more all told i got three full layers which seems respectable and then on the final layer we're just gonna hit it with a generous coating of tomato sauce and a generous grating of parmesan cheese this is something i never really understood about old school lasagna recipes which never seem to include mozzarella on top which i think makes the lasagna easier to cut down the line i'm also just going to hit this with a little bit of salt and freshly ground pepper i don't think this is totally necessary but i'm gonna go ahead and pretend that it's traditional then we're gonna cover this guy tightly with aluminum foil and place in a 350 degree fahrenheit oven for 30 minutes this is going to give the lasagna noodles time to finish cooking and get everybody melty and happy then we're going to uncover and place back in the oven for 15 to 30 minutes until it's browned and bubbly on top and i gotta say this looks exactly like how i always imagined garfield's lasagna looked so whoops wrong episode either way we're letting this sit for at least 15 minutes before digging in and as predicted we've got some basil leaf interference here but no matter because this is a pretty solidly stacked lasagna and as it turns out there's absolutely no such thing as too much basil i just kind of wish it was chopped up and mixed up with the ricotta or something so it's a little bit more evenly dispersed and less intrusive in my lasagna consumption if you want to see the badass from scratch brad leone and babish style lasagna go check out my garfield lasagna video in the upper right hand corner right now because otherwise we're on to making ziti the oft disgust but rarely seen carmella's specialty first up we're cooking a pound of ziti to very al dente about five minutes tops extracting into a large bowl and tossing with a cup or two of gravy give that a nice mixeroo and then it's time to negotiate our cheese everybody who's anybody loves little chunks of mozzarella in their baked ziti so that's what we're gonna do another aluminum casserole because all this stuff is going to neighbors and friends so i don't die spread half of the sauce ziti over the bottom of the casserole and then we're gonna top that up with some gobs of ricotta again i must object but we are going for accuracy here spread that out as evenly as possible and then sprinkle our half inch chunks of fresh mozzarella over top we are then going to top that up with a generous grating of parmesan cheese maybe ounce ounce and half's worth the remaining half of our ziti which we're going to spread out nice and even make sure that none of that cheese is exposed to oxygen then we're going to top the whole thing off with another cup or two of gravy nothing is sadder in this world than under sauced fake ziti and lastly another ounce or so of grated parmesan until it looks like a nice light snowfall and then it's the exact same process as before we're covering tightly with aluminum foil and placing in a 350 degree fahrenheit oven for 30 minutes removing and unwrapping so we can expose all that cheese and pasta to the loving warmth of the oven and placing back inside for 15 to 20 minutes until it looks like this browned and bubbly and crispy and saucy and happy now again this recipe makes a perfectly serviceable baked ziti i'm almost less opposed to the parmesan only topping because we're scooping instead of slicing so a crispy crunchy top is actually nice and welcome the sauce is delicious the cheese is delicious the pasta's delicious the ricotta is okay we got ourselves a winner and an obvious member of the clean plate club but can we do better and the answer is yes by simply flying in the face of all tradition my first atrocity to use rigatoni instead of ziti i like the ridges which help grab onto the sauce and little bits of meat and help make each bite a little bit more inclusive next up the mozzarella instead of fresh we're going to use low moisture full fat this stuff melts up beautifully without pissing a bunch of extra liquid into our pasta alforno next up and this is the really crazy one here 16 ounces of cottage cheese cottage cheese gets super creamy instead of grainy when baked up so it's gonna be really nice to that we're gonna add two whole eggs and about two ounces of grated parmesan cheese i'm also gonna add some optional freshly grated nutmeg this is going to add some really beautiful nutty old-school italian flavor give that a cursory mix together and then comes the basil chopped up into little bite-sized pieces to maximize both flavor and mouth convenience add that to our cheese mixer give it a good normal size whisking and then the final and i think most awesome element a bechamel which i think you could add to any one of the recipes today because it's gonna make our end product super creamy and rich into a medium saucepan goes three tablespoons of butter melted followed by three tablespoons of flour whisk together and cooked for one minute before slowly streaming in two cups of milk whisking constantly and cooking for an additional one to two minutes until a thick creamy bechamel forms and then it's time to bring it all together into the pasta goes a couple cups of gravy our beautiful bechamel sauce and our cottage cheese egg parmesan and basil mixture give that a nice little mix until everybody's homogenous and a little bit cooled off so we can add eight ounces of cubed low moisture mozzarella just give that a little mix until everybody's evenly dispersed throughout and then evacuate into our aluminum pan thing i've run out of things to call it make sure everybody's spread out evenly and top with one to two cups of extra gravy and then i'm going to top that with half a pound of shredded mozzarella which will hopefully melt into one nice even layer and then i'm gonna top that with another ounce of grated parmesan did somebody just say that's too much cheese i'm gonna go ahead and ask you to leave same exact procedure as before cover 350 oven 30 minutes take out unwrap put back an oven 15-20 minutes lightly brown bubbly around the edges and if you ask me looking absolutely perfect but you don't judge a ziti by its topmost layer or a rigatoni in this case either way this is the best pasta alfono that i've ever had in my 32 years the pasta is perfectly cooked with an almost vodka sauce-like creaminess to it the flavors are complex and layered it's a good thing carmella didn't make this ziti because otherwise father phil might have been a lot harder to get rid of next up some of artibuco's recipes from vesuvio you\n"