Baked Ziti

I love baked ziti. Back in high school when I worked in retail, I'd always get baked ziti on my lunch breaks from this Italian place in the food court. Baked ziti is delicious comfort food. It's pasta tubes mixed with tomato sauce and three kinds of cheese, then topped with more sauce and cheese and baked. It's very simple to make, and creamy and tomatoey at the same time. Can't complain about that! This is the recipe that I adapted from the one I found on Allrecipes.com.

Ingredients:

• 8 ounces or 225 grams of ziti pasta (or penne, if you can't find any ziti)
• 5 ounces or 150 grams of ricotta cheese
• 8 ounces or 225 grams of shredded mozzarella cheese (reserve some to top the dish)
• 1/4 cup of grated Parmesan cheese 
• 1 egg, beaten
• 10 ounces of tomato sauce (reserve some to top the dish)

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Grease a medium baking dish. You can use butter or olive oil - whatever floats your boat.

Boil the pasta in salted water. You can undercook it just a little if you don't like your pasta too soft, because you will also be baking it so it will cook a bit longer in the oven. Drain the pasta and put it back in the pot, or in a big mixing bowl.

Mix the ricotta, shredded mozzarella (after reserving some for topping the dish), Parmesan, egg, and sauce (again, after reserving some for topping the dish) in with the pasta. Pour the mixture into the baking dish.

Spread the remaining tomato sauce and cheese on top of the pasta mixture. I also added a bit of extra Parmesan on top - the dry, grated stuff - because it browns nicely. Bake at 375 degrees for 30 minutes and then let it stand for 10 minutes before serving.

***