Delicious to boot, THIS is the type of food I’m talking about when I’m talking about Real Food. Today I have a recipe to share for Baked Rigatoni With Ham, Tomatoes and Feta Cheese. Now, if you’re not a fan of feta, ham or tomatoes, don’t look away yet, because this is one of those basic recipes that you can adapt to suit your particular tastes- or to suit a particular scrap of leftover you have hanging around the fridge or freezer.
This takes less than 10 minutes of active cook time. Ten minutes people. One of my issues with the idea of cooking packaged and/or processed food is that it is very often done in the interest of saving time. This recipe uses real food, in real time, and makes a delicious pan of baked pasta that my whole family enjoyed immensely. And it’s easy, super easy. One of the first directions is to bring a pot of water to boil and cook a box of rigatoni until it is al dente- the ten minutes of time you need to assemble and prepare the remaining ingredients.
While your pasta is boiling away, you need to chop 1 1/2 cups of ham (or chicken, or turkey, or use some pre-browned ground beef if you like), and you need to chop 4 plum tomatoes (or halve two pints of grape tomatoes, or use sun-dried tomatoes, or roasted red peppers, or add some frozen broccoli if you wish). Next, you’ll need to grate one cup of mozzarella cheese. You could obviously use pre-grated, but that’s one of those convenience products I reserve for camping. It just doesn’t taste quite as good as using a block of fresh cheese. But I digress.
When your pasta is cooked- you want it still a little chewy, drain it, and dump it into a bowl (or right in a 9×13 baking dish if you want one less dish to wash) along with your chopped ham, chopped tomatoes, mozzarella cheese, 1 cup of feta cheese crumbles, and 1 1/2 teaspoons of dried thyme. Toss this all together, and then add 1 cup of heavy cream. Mix it all up. If you’ve used a bowl, dump this into a greased 9×13 baking dish, and then cover your dish with foil. Pop it into a 375ºF oven and bake for 15 minutes. Pull it out of the oven, lift the foil, and give it a quick toss to distribute those cheeses which are getting all gooey and delicious. Put the foil back on, and then bake for another 30 minutes. Done. Dinner is on the table, and you had to contribute less than ten minutes of active time.
Is this as easy as opening up a can and dumping? Obviously not, but it’s lacking artificial anything, and is made from real ingredients. This recipe comes to us from Bon Appetit’s Fast, Easy, Fresh cookbook. I love this book, because the recipes inside all require a minimum amount of work, because they’re meant to be made during the work week when we’re all super busy. And yet, all the recipes I’ve tried from it have been delicious enough to serve to weekend company. Almost all the recipes also have less than ten ingredients as well, so they don’t look terribly daunting in the first place.
This recipe as written is wonderful I worried that the ham and the feta combined would be too much salt, but it was so perfectly balanced by the roasted tomatoes and the earthy thyme. This isn’t a saucy pasta, as the cream combines with the cheeses and kind of gets absorbed into the pasta- but even the leftovers of this heated in the microwave were tasty. This one will get repeated.
Baked Rigatoni with Ham, Tomatoes, and Feta Cheese
from Bon Appetit’s Fast, Easy, Fresh Cookbook
12 ounces rigatoni (I used 16 ounces- an entire box) 1 1/2 cups diced ham (about 8 ounces- and this you could buy from the deli pre-chopped) 4 large plum tomatoes, chopped 1 cup crumbled feta cheese (about 4 ounces)1 cup (packed) grated mozzarella cheese (about 4 ounces) 1 1/2 teaspoons dried thyme 1 cup heavy whipping cream
Directions:
Preheat oven to 375ºF. Butter a 13x9x2-inch glass baking dish. Cook rigatoni in a large pot of boiling salted water until just tender- but still firm to bite, stirring occasionally. Drain. Place in prepared baking dish. Mix in ham, tomatoes, cheeses and thyme. Pour cream over. Sprinkle with salt and pepper and toss to blend. Cover with foil.
Bake pasta 15 minutes. Uncover and stir to coat pasta evenly with melted cheeses. Cover again. Bake until heated through, about 30 minutes longer.
Makes 6 servings.