This pasta basically saved my life this week. I try real hard to do as much prep, planning, and organizing over the weekend as I can. I make a list of all of our meals for the week, do the grocery shopping, and make our lunches for the week every Sunday. I don’t know what happened last week but none of my planning, prepping, and organizing resulted in actual meals. I did have quite a few muffins though. Luckily for me. Not so lucky for Cliff. Every evening was a scramble to throw together dinner. Our vegetable on more than 1 night was a plain old cucumber from the garden. Not even any ranch to dip it in. 1 night there was no dinner at all. Whoops. Fortunately for me, I recently found this pasta in my Americas Test Kitchen Cookbook. Serious life saver. I’ve made it twice in the past 4 days.
This is a really easy dinner to throw together. You can add whatever veggies you have on hand. I was going to do mushrooms and zucchini but Cliff insisted on peppers and onions. The second time we made it I added a little extra spice (reflected below). We ate this for dinner 1 night and got an additional 3 lunches out of it. Then I made it again and I was able to use the leftovers for Cliff’s lunch all week. You can imagine how much ziti Cliff has eaten in the last week. And you know how many complaints I’ve gotten. Zero. You know that is a sign of a great meal. This is one we will definitely be repeating.
Spicy Skillet Ziti with Peppers and Onions
Ingredients
- 2 tbsp olive oil
- 5 cloves garlic, minced
- 1/2 crushed red pepper flakes
- 1 28 oz can of crushed tomatoes
- 3 cup water
- 1 lb ziti
- 1 yellow pepper, cut into chunks
- 1/2 onion, cut into chunks
- 1/2 cup heavy cream
- 1/2 cup ricotta cheese
- 1/4 cup Parmesan cheese, grated
- salt
- pepper
- 4 oz fresh mozzarella, sliced
- basil
Instructions
- Heat the oil over medium high heat in a large skillet.
- Add the garlic and red pepper flakes and cook until fragrant; about 2 minutes
- Add the tomatoes and water.
- Cover and bring to a simmer.
- Add the pasta.
- Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F.
- Simmer for 10 minutes.
- Remove from heat.
- Add the peppers and onions and stir.
- Add the heavy cream.
- Combine the ricotta cheese, Parmesan cheese and a pinch of salt and pepper.
- Mix well.
- Place spoonfuls of ricotta mixture over pasta.
- Add the sliced mozzarella.
- Bake uncovered for 10 minutes.
- Top with basil.