Sharing a baked pasta dish just as the calendar turns to June seems silly, and yet here I am doing just that. I was tasked with using up a container of ricotta recently before it expired. I made some Lemon Poppy Ricotta Pancakes (recipe coming soon!), and a batch of these lemon poppy olive oil cakes. Still, there was a bit more left to use up, and my mind wandered towards baked ziti.
I didn’t want something heavy since the weather has been warmer, so I started thinking about how I could lighten it up a bit and also bump up the protein without adding meat. What I settled on is my version of an Italian mac & cheese.
The filling starts out by making a bechamel sauce, a classic white sauce made by melting butter then whisking in some flour over medium-low heat to cook the flour a bit. Borrowing a little from the method used for making pasticcio, I decided to add an egg to the bechamel, except I opted for just the egg white since I wanted the added protein without the fat from the yolk. This helps further thicken the sauce. You can opt for the whole egg for a richer sauce.
Once the sauce is done, it comes off the stove top, and the ricotta and pecorino get whisked in until blended. The cooked pasta and broccoli get stirred in, and then the whole thing gets spooned into a casserole dish. In a nod to baked ziti, I decided to top the pasta with some marinara sauce, mozzarella and more pecorino. It then gets baked until the cheese is melted, bubbly and a bit golden. I suggest a run under the broiler for a more charred, cheesy topping.
A word about how I cook the broccoli. This is my lazy tip for cooking veggies when they’re going into a pasta dish—add them to the pasta while it’s cooking for the last 30 to 60 seconds. For spinach or frozen peas, you can just add them to the strainer before draining the pasta. The heat from the boiling water will wilt the spinach or be just enough to cook the peas along with the residual heat from the pasta.
Using this cheat to cook veggies makes easy work of busy weekday dinners. It’s does mean, though, that you need to be generous with seasoning since blanched vegetables tend to need some sprucing up. Another option for cooking the broccoli for this baked pasta recpe, is to char it in a skillet lightly coated with olive oil—don’t forget to season with salt and pepper. I sometimes prep the broccoli this way, and love the extra depth of flavor it adds to the final dish. It all depends on how much effort or energy I want to invest.
I love the way my past and present come together in this meal. It’s got the cheesy baked pasta vibes I was hoping for, using all the ingredients I love, and the added benefit of 28g protein per serving. This recipe is also proof you don’t have to put cottage cheese in baked ziti to make it macro-friendly (and I’d argue cottage cheese NEVER belongs in baked ziti—period). —xo, j.
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