Everyone wants to come home on a Monday night and spend 30 minutes trashing the kitchen for a dinner that bakes for an hour, right? Ok, maybe only those of us who are frustrated… Anyhow, I was in desperate need for comfort food. And, having recently discovered that the more expensive versions of some cheese are lactose free (probably due to the fact that they are real cheeses made the old-fashioned way and not chemically coagulated fakes), I was ready to bliss out.
Because this recipe has not been perfected, I’m going to share it with you as it stands right now. It’s going to need refining for calories and fat (bog time!)
| Sauce | Filling |
| 1 tbs extra virgin olive oil
4 garlic cloves, smashed
28 ozs canned tomato sauce
14 1/2 ozs canned diced tomatoes
1 tsp dried oregano
1/4 tsp freshly ground black pepper
1 tsp sugar, optional | 1 lb cottage cheese
2 eggs, lightly beaten
1/2 cup parmesan cheese
1 lb ziti, or short tubular pasta
1 tsp cornstarch
1 cup chicken broth, or cream
8 ozs mozzarella cheese, cubed |
| | |
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
Put olive oil and garlic into a cold, 12" pan, and cook over low until garlic starts to turn golden.
Scoop out garlic and set aside.
Add tomato sauce, diced tomatoes, oregano, and pepper (sugar if you want it).
Bring to a boil, then let simmer until thickened. Boil a large pot of water.
Add a generous amount of salt, and the pasta, and cook for 7 minutes. It will not be done.
Drain.
Mix cottage cheese, eggs, 1/4 cup Parmesan, and half of the mozzarella together in medium bowl; set aside.
In the pot that held the pasta, mix the chicken broth with the cornstarch and cook and stir for a minute or two. It won't be very thick, but it will thicken slightly.
Remove from the heat and add the cottage cheese mixture, and 1 cup of the sauce.
Stir in the pasta.
Pour pasta into a 9 x 13 inch baking dish and spread remaining tomato sauce evenly over the top.
Sprinkle remaining mozzarella and remaining 1/2 cup Parmesan over top.
Cover with foil and bake for 30 minutes.
Remove foil and continue to cook until cheese is bubbling and beginning to brown, about 30 minutes longer. |
My first issue was the ziti. The store did not have ziti, but it did have short rigatoni. Cottage cheese is not normally lactose free, but you can find it (by Lactaid). The original recipe called for heavy cream where I used chicken broth. After all this work to make the dish lactose free, I couldn’t go there. It’s dairy rich anyhow.
I started the sauce but kept the garlic after scooping it out. Then put it through the garlic press and added half back to the sauce, and mixed the other half with some butter for garlic bread. Next time I’ll use A LOT more garlic. The diced tomatoes already had garlic/oregano/basil (grabbed the wrong can), but it didn’t affect the taste at all.
The pasta cooked at the same time, and while everything was cooking away, I mixed up the cottage cheese filling. Traditionally this would be ricotta. The cottage cheese curds do not melt, so if it’s gonna bug you, use ricotta, but you might need to add some salt.
The sauce was done, the pasta was draining, and I was just about to skip the chicken broth step, but decided that the thick, partially cooked pasta would need the liquid (good call). It didn’t really thicken tremendously, next time I’ll try just mixing it in.
At exactly the 30 minute mark the pasta was in the oven, the kitchen was a disaster, and the dog was trying to lick spilled sauce off of her back (I told her to move!).
I took the foil off at 30 minutes, and the pasta was mostly cooked. 30 minutes longer and it was gorgeous. I set it aside and popped the garlic bread in the oven (@ 425) and steamed some broccoli. The pasta was still piping hot 10 minutes later.
But would my family like it? The boys did not appreciate the crusty pasta at the edges, or the big chunks of tomato. The cottage cheese curds didn’t seem to bother them. My husband liked it so much that he cleaned up the kitchen with nary a complaint of the huge task. I think the leftovers that I took for lunch were even better.
You won’t be able to add this to your meal plan until the recipe has been fine tuned; but if you try this drop us a line in the comments or through the feedback link and let us know what you think!
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