Ground Beef and Ziti with Spicy Red Sauce

On Sunday I made my first recipe out of my new cookbook, courtesy of Harvard Common Press. As I mentioned in my post yesterday, when we visited the book publisher a couple of weekends ago they were generous enough to give us a cookbook each to take home. I ended up taking Not Your Mother’s Casseroles. I seriously love casseroles and spent the afternoon after the HCP event thumbing through my new book.

I ended up deciding on a recipe for Ground Beef and Ziti with Spicy Red Sauce (p 192). I didn’t have Ziti, but I did have plenty of other short pastas, so I went with the Cellentani (spiral shape w/ ridges) as I felt the ridges would be closest to the Ziti.

Everything Ya Need

Ingredients

• 9 x 13 baking dish
• 1 pound ziti
• Olive oil
• 1 pound ground beef or pork
• 1 large onion, finely chopped
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• 1 tablespoon tomato paste
• 2 teaspoons chipotle chile powder
• 1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
• One 28 -ounce can tomato sauce
• 1 teaspoon sugar
• 1 1/2 teaspoons salt
• Freshly ground black pepper
• 2 large eggs, beaten
• 2 tablespoons unsalted butter
• 3/4 cup dry bread crumbs

Directions

• Preheat the oven to 350 degrees and lightly grease the baking pan with olive oil.
• Cook pasta according to package directions until barely al dente. Drain, toss with a drizzle of olive oil, return to cooking pot and set aside.
• Meanwhile, heat a drizzle of oil in a wide, deep skillet. Add ground beef and cook over medium-high heat, stirring and breaking into crumbles, until crispy and well browned.
• Add the onion and garlic to the meat and turn down to medium-low. Cook for about 10 minutes, or until onion are fragrant and soft. Then add the tomato paste and chipotle and saute with the beef and onions for a minute or two.
• Stir in the Worcestershire and tomato sauce and bring the sauce to a simmer.

• Simmer for 10 minutes, or until mixture is slightly reduced. Then set sauce aside and let it cool for about 5 minutes Season with the sugar, salt and pepper to taste. When sauce is slightly cooled, stir in the beaten eggs.
• Spread the cooked pasta in the prepared baking dish, then pour the meat sauce over the top, stir just a little, doesn’t need to be combined thoroughly.
• In a small skillet heat the butter over medium heat, then add the bread crumbs. Cook until the bread crumbs have absorbed most of the butter. Spread over the top of the pasta dish.

• Bake, uncovered for 30 minutes or until the bread crumbs are browned and the sauce is bubbling.

Fresh Out of the Oven!

We loved the way this dish came out. It was so savory and hearty. Perfect for a cold winter day. E. and I both like things extra spicy so although it had a small kick, we’ll amp up the heat in this quite a bit next time around. This is what you get from folks who have an entire condiment shelf in their fridge dedicated to different hot sauces…

Delish!

If you liked the sounds of this dish, just wait. I’ll be doing two posts a week all through the month of February of recipes from Not Your Mother’s Casserole. This book has it all, breakfast items, appetizers, pasta bakes, veggie-only, meat and seafood casseroles, and more. I’ll be trying a little bit of everything in February, so stay tuned, we’ll get through this winter by cookin’ up a storm of casseroles together!