Baked Rigatoni and Ziti

The girls got all excited about the idea of preparing Baked Ziti. No idea where they picked up that nonsense. But we went ahead and gave it a shot. Here is our second truly original recipe (As we went shopping for ingredients, Lily thought the Ziti to be too unassuming and decided we should do 50/50 Ziti and Rigatoni.):

 

Lena started the adventure by cutting up 2 sticks of celery, half a red onion, and 2 garlic cloves.

Next we got a pot of salt water going to cook a total of 1lb of Ziti and Rigatoni pasta.

We also started frying up 1 lb of happy beef with a dash of olive oil, a little salt, pepper, ground coriander seed, and cumin, as well as separately softening the cut-up veggies in a bit more olive oil.

In the meantime Lena cut up 3 big handfuls of tomatoes.

After about ten minutes we added the pasta to the boiling water and about 1 cup worth of red wine to the veggies.

After a few minutes we added about a half cup of veggie broth and

all the tomatoes,

fresh rosemary, and the stem of the tomatoes (We are convinced that it adds good flavor).

While the pasta and tomatoes were cooking for about eight to ten minutes we turned the oven to 400F, shredded about 3 handfuls of white Cheddar and Parmesan cheese, and

cut up 2 handfuls of kale.

We removed the tomato stem and whizzed up the veggies to a sauce; rounding off the great flavors with salt and pepper and adding the browned crispy meat.

Now we had all the ingredients ready: cooked pasta, shredded cheese, kale, home made tomato sauce, and a hot oven.

Then Lena went ahead and kept layering pasta, sauce, kale, and cheese into a baking dish until it was filled to the top.

We stuck int into the oven for 15 minutes until all that goodness started to brown on the top.

There it is. Baked Ziti. It came out just beautifully good looking and tasted DELICIOUS!