Made with Classic Tomato and Garlic

Baked Shells

Name: Baked Shells
Yield: Serves 6-8
Ingredients: 2 jars Roman’s Classic Tomato and Garlic or Spicy Tomato with Fennel sauce; 1 cup (8 ounces) ricotta; 2 tablespoons heavy cream; 1 pound large pasta shells, rigatoni or ziti; ½ pound salted mozzarella, roughly torn by hand or grated on a box grater; Parmesan, for grating

Serves 6-8

Shop the sauce

Less intensely indulgent than classic Baked Ziti and a lot less fussy than lasagna, in my old age this is sort of the only baked pasta I’m making these days. It’s got all the hits: pasta, cheese, sauce, but feels casual in a way that makes it seem possible to throw together for dinner to feed 6–8 of your closest friends tonight, if you wanted (especially when the sauce is made). So easy, you can kind of just close your eyes and put some things (boiled pasta, red sauce, cheese) in a baking dish, bake it, and love your life.

Ingredients

2 jars Roman’s Classic Tomato and Garlic or Spicy Tomato with Fennel sauce
1 cup (8 ounces) ricotta
2 tablespoons heavy cream
1 pound large pasta shells, rigatoni or ziti
½ pound salted mozzarella, roughly torn by hand or grated on a box grater
Parmesan, for grating

Preparation

Make the cheese mixture: In a medium bowl, combine ricotta, heavy cream, and 1 clove grated garlic. Season with salt and pepper and set aside.
Prepare the pasta: Heat oven to 425 degrees, and place a large pot of salted water to boil on the stove. Cook pasta until it’s nearly al dente, and drain. Return pasta to pot and add two cups sauce, tossing to make sure the sauce gets in all the nooks and crannies and is nicely coated.
When assembling, try not to fuss too much over the measurements, but be mindful that you always want to end with a good amount of cheese and sauce on the top to give you a bubbly, browned top.

Spoon a bit of the remaining sauce in the bottom of a 3 quart baking dish, then add ⅓ of the pasta. Spoon a little sauce on top, then dollop with ricotta, and dot with mozzarella. Grate parmesan on top. Add another ⅓ of the pasta, followed by more sauce, more ricotta, mozzarella, and parmesan. Add the rest of the pasta, more sauce, the rest of the ricotta, mozzarella, another good grating of parm, and some pepper (note: there’s a good chance you’ll have some pasta sauce left over– refrigerate or freeze for another time).
Place the baking dish on a foil-lined sheet pan, and loosely cover the baking dish with foil. Place in the oven and bake for about 20 minutes before removing the foil and continuing to bake until it’s nicely browned and bubbling, another 20-ish minutes. Let cool at least 5 minutes or so before eating– it will stay VERY hot for a while, so don’t worry.

NOTE: For meaty red sauce: In a large pot, saute 1 pound ground beef, pork, lamb, turkey or sausage. Season well with salt and pepper and cook, breaking up the meat with your spoon or spatula until well browned, 8–10 minutes. Then go ahead and add tomato sauce, bring to a simmer and cook for 15–20 minutes.

Do ahead:The baked pasta itself can be assembled and baked several days ahead, kept wrapped and refrigerated– to reheat from cold, simply bake per the instructions above. It can also be assembled and frozen up to two months ahead– to reheat from frozen, keep wrapped in foil and bake at 325° until totally defrosted and bubbly (60-ish minutes), remove foil, increase temperature to 425° and bake until golden brown, 20 minutes or so.

More recipes with Classic Tomato and Garlic sauce

Pasta e Ceci Salad

While not officially any sort of textbook version of pasta e ceci, the backbone here is still both pasta and chickpeas (ceci). The trick of letting the canned garbanzos swim in the pasta water for a brief time pays dividends, reviving them from their canned self, plumping them slightly and, most importantly, making their surface more receptive to flavor—important once the sauce comes into the picture. Olives and parsley are great here, but in the spirit of this sort of fridge-clean-out, do-less-with-more, accidentally fabulous recipe, I kept them optional.

Tomato Pasta with Eggplant and Sausage (on the side)

Decidedly a tomato pasta with eggplant and not an eggplant pasta– so much so that the eggplant could easily be replaced with any vegetable– say, peppers, fennel or zucchini. The moral of the story is you can sauté any vegetable in sausage fat, add tomato sauce or puree and have a very good, saucy tomato pasta that’s more than the sum of its parts. With a little sausage on the side, it feels more like a “full dinner” and less like a “bowl of food”.