Tuesday Night Dinner: Baked Pasta

For the Tuesday night dinner before I went to Denver, I made a baked penne in a mushroom and Italian sausage marinara and topped with shredded cheese. There was also salad and garlic bread, as always. The marinara was amazing, and Scott put this dinner in his Top 10 favorite dinners. I took the time to make the marinara the night before, letting it simmer for an hour and a half and then sit in the fridge all day Tuesday. This is probably what made the sauce that much better, giving the flavors the time to truly meld together. I don't really remember what I did exactly and I never measure my marinara anymore. Crushed tomatoes, tomato sauce, Italian seasoning, plenty of minced garlic, salt, pepper, a few pinches of white sugar, maybe a hint of crushed red pepper flakes. I do love a good red sauce.

Carrie: ICBC Eggplant

I was pretty excited to receive my e-mail from Sarah Michelle and find out that the secret ingredient is eggplant. It's a vegetable that receives a lot of love in this house, so I was also excited to see what else I could do with it. I stumbled across this Real Simple recipe for Eggplant Lasagna with Herbed Ricotta and Asiago, and I adapted it for my own time and budget purposes.

Ingredients
3 medium eggplants, sliced into thin discs
olive oil
garlic
3 eggs
3 cups of ricotta
dried basil and oregano
salt and pepper
two cans of crushed tomatoes
two cans of tomato sauce
shredded mozzarella

Prepare marinara sauce. Dump crushed tomatoes and tomato sauce into large pot, season with basil, oregano, salt and pepper. (You could sub out the basil and oregano for an Italian seasonings spice mix too.) Simmer on medium-low while you prepare the eggplants.

Slice the eggplants into 1/4-inch to 1/2-inch slices. Dehydrate them on cookie sheets by sprinkling with salt, washing off the salt, and patting them dry with a clean cloth.

Prepare cheese filling by mixing ricotta with eggs and seasonings.

Place some marinara sauce in the bottom of a baking pan, then eggplant, then ricotta, and repeat. Top it off with shredded mozzarella. (This recipe requires two baking pans. I used a 13x9 and an 8x8.) Bake at 400 degrees until cheese is slightly browned and bubbling.