Baked Pasta

Courtesy of Mark Bittman a couple of weeks ago, sort of. He had a recipe with Italian sausage, and I did an even more streamlined version. It actually took a while to get around to doing it because Todd always changed the subject or suggested something else for dinner whenever I said I was making pasta. I don't know what he thought I was planning to make.

It was really easy, though. Todd cooked 3/4 pound campanelle just a couple minutes short of being done while I diced up about 3/4 pound mozzarella. We tossed half the cheese with the pasta, some sauce from a jar and some flash-frozen spinach (I bought a bag of this stuff from Trader Joe's and I love it; instead of being one big clump of frozen spinach, it's individual leaves, so it's so easy to grab a few and throw them in a soup, sauce, etc).

Dumped that in a casserole dish, covered it with the rest of the mozzarella and grated some Parmesan over the top. Baked it for 20 minutes in a 400 degree oven, until the top was all melted and getting kind of crusty on the edges. It was so good, with the crunchier top noodles and the gooey, cheesey pasta underneath.

Todd really liked it a lot.