The easiest Baked Penne… ever!!!!

This is one of the easiest recipes… ever!!

The funny thing, it has not been even 24 hours since I learned about it.  I was perusing one of my favorite food blogs – Serious Eats… and in one of the Talk threads there was a discussion about making mac & cheese without boiling the pasta first.  Then, one of the participants – his/her name is hanak– mentioned this recipe for Baked Ziti without even boiling the pasta.  I always get stumped at what to do for lunch… so when I read this today, my lunch dilemma was immediately solved.  I would do this while I finished some stuff at the computer.  God bless  hanak and the Baked Ziti recipe…

I modified the recipe a little – as you know… can’t bear to make a recipe “by the book” not even once.  Here is the recipe as it was given to me today and with notes on the modifications I made to it today at 1PM:

 THE EASIEST BAKED PENNE

8oz whole wheat pasta – I used penne, but ziti or any tubular pasta would work

28oz can of crushed tomatoes – I used a 26oz carton of Pomi crushed tomatoes

6 tbs extra-virgin olive oil

2 tsp chopped garlic

Salt and Pepper to taste

Fresh Mozzarella –  optional

Grated Parmesan cheese – optional

1. Soak the dry pasta in the olive oil for around 20 minutes.
2. Pre-heat oven to 400 degrees. 
3. Add the crushed tomatoes, garlic, salt and pepper to taste.
4. Bake for about 45 minutes, stirring every 15 minutes.

This is a picture of the pasta at this point.  It is DELICIOUS just like this!!!!  A bit oily to my taste, so maybe the next time I will try to see if I can cut the oil in half… but believe me, it’s been a while I tasted a pasta that I would eat as is, without any cheese.  This one is awesome.  I even bragged to my mom about it already…

I decided to use up some leftover fresh mozzarella cheese… so I added a few pieces in the dish, sprinkled some grated parm/romano cheese and put it back in the oven with the residual heat after I turned it off.  It is really good, but as hanak said… it does not need it.

Thanks a lot to my fellow online foodies, but specially to hanak and this awesome Baked Pasta recipe…  they are all a source of inspiration and hunger-relief. 

GRACIAS!!!!

Tags: crushed tomatoes, garlic, whole wheat pasta