Ravioli Lasagna

My Dad emailed my brother and I to say that he was going to be in town one night for dinner. We agreed that we would all meet at my place, since it was a weeknight and our arrival times would be staggered because of work. Sounded good to me.

Not sure what to make, I googled “What should I make for dinner?”

Up popped a multiple choice quiz, like the kind I used to fill out in Seventeen magazine except that instead of answering questions about boys and makeup, I answered questions about how many people would be over, how many of them would be kids, how long I wanted to spend cleaning up, how well-stocked my kitchen is, and how picky my guests would be.

After all that, the top recommended dish was Ravioli Lasagna. That seemed to be exactly what I was looking for – easy to pre-make, fancy yet easy, having both protein and carbs, and Italian. I didn’t know from the outset what I was looking for, but once I saw it, I knew this was it.

Start off with teeny tiny zucchini. Seems wrong to buy these when a decent garden would produce 10,000 of these. But I don’t have a garden, so I bought them.

Slice them up.

Put them in a skillet with some oil and sauté them. I seasoned them with salt and pepper. Odd that the recipe didn’t say to do that, but they did need some flavor.

Next, take some thawed frozen meatballs and slice them up. I used Wegman’s turkey meatballs to be a little healthier.

Lots of them!

Then I thawed some of my own homemade meatballs that I had in the freezer and sliced those, too. See, I’m so used to cooking for two people that the idea of cooking for five made me think I needed to double the recipe that I was using.

Pour some spaghetti sauce in the bottom of a big casserole dish. This was Wegman’s Grandpa’s Sauce, which hubby is a huge fan of. It has Italian sausage and roasted red pepper and wine and a bit of fairy dust, as well.

Spread some of the meatballs in the pan. I think I was intending to do three layers at this point, though the recipe technically only suggests two.

Then I put zucchini on top of the meatballs.

Followed by frozen cheese ravioli. Didn’t bother to thaw them, didn’t see the point. Just frozen bricks at this point.

Then grated mozzarella cheese. And that’s the first layer!

More sauce…

More meatballs…

More ravioli and zucchini

And more sauce and cheese.

Then the pan was pretty full, so I stopped there.

I covered it with foil and stuck it in the fridge to be cooked later. See, I had had a really rough day. Long story short, I was pulled over because my emissions had expired in MD and I hadn’t put my brand new NY plates on the car yet. Rather than writing me a ticket and letting me go to my job interview, the cop impounded my car and left me stranded at a gas station. Lovely day. It all worked out in the end, since I had all the valid paperwork I needed, but it was a rough day. So I was happy to be done with dinner super early and free to drink wine with my dad when he got here. Wine never tasted so good.

About an hour before I wanted to serve food, I put the ravioli lasagna in the oven (still covered with foil) and baked it for about 40 minutes. Then I removed the foil and let it cook for a while longer. Then it was done. Cheesy, bubbly, and warm.

Just what the doctor ordered.

My niece really liked it.

And my camera.

And posing for the camera.

My eyes were bigger than my stomach. It looked so good that I really loaded up my plate.

It may have been more complicated than it needed to be. I probably could have just dumped the whole meatballs in a casserole dish, covered with the ravioli, mixed them up, smothered them in sauce and cheese, and called it a day. But I have to say that I liked the layered effect, and sometimes I think that putting in a little extra effort makes it taste better. Anyway, it was a lot easier than my normal lasagna, which involves making the meat sauce from scratch and boiling noodles and using three kinds of cheese and making a huge mess.

Easy, yummy, and good reheated: that’s a winner in my book.

Boozy Barbecue Meatballs

This recipe is blatantly stolen borrowed from Julia at Fat Girl Trapped in a Skinny Body. I saw it ages ago on her site and starred it in Google Reader, then promptly forgot about it. I recently scrolled through my collection of forgotten starred items and rediscovered it. Of course, I couldn’t wait to make it. Easy AND delicious? Yes, please.

The ingredients for my sauce: beer, barbecue sauce, and cranberry sauce. That’s it.

Also, a bag of frozen meatballs. I didn’t have the little appetizer ones, so I used big “Wegman’s Italian Classics” meatballs. I think this was a really good substitution.

Step 1: Make sauce by plopping the three sauce ingredients in a crock pot (cranberry sauce, beer, and barbecue sauce).

Step 2: Mix.

Step 3: Add frozen meatballs.

Step 4: Drink the rest of the beer (Honestly, that’s what Julia said to do. I didn’t think of that all on my own. I was really just following directions and didn’t have a choice).

A few hours later, the alcohol in the beer had cooked off and left behind a flavor that mixed oh so well with the BBQ and cranberry flavors.

I went a bit beyond Julia’s conceptualization of serving these as appetizers, and put them on fresh bakery rolls with sliced Swiss cheese.

Then I cut them up just to make eating a little easier.

Just as I was finishing putting it together, hubby got home from work. He announced that dinner smelled good, then walked into the room and saw what was on his plate. A big ol’ grin and an exclamation of “Oh my!” and I knew I done good.

Yes, done good.

Super easy (about 5 minutes to prepare, assuming you’re using pre-fabbed ingredients instead of making your own) and super delicious. Can’t get much better than that.

Perfect dinner!

Okay, this isn’t a real post, the kind with pictures and a new recipe and step-by-step playback of my kitchen experiment. Consider this more of a follow-up.

Remember this dish? That creamy tomato-based dish with Italian sausage and rotini pasta that I was so proud of inventing?

I made it again, and I made some key tweaks:

1. I remembered the cream cheese this time, and I added about twice as much as I normally do. I guess I was making up for that day I forgot it. Also, I was hungry.

2. I diced and included an extra fresh tomato that I had sitting on my counter. Seemed silly to use canned diced tomato and ignore the fresh one entirely, but I didn’t want to skip out on the canned stuff either.

3. I included 2 leftover meatballs and some sauce from Meem's spaghetti and meatballs. Just sliced up the meatballs and dropped them in the sauce with everything else. I didn’t even slice them up correctly because I didn’t want to get my cutting board all saucy – I just stuck a butter knife into the gladware container that the meatballs were in and did my cutting freestyle.

4. Less cheese on top, mainly because the cheese I had smelled a little funky. I used a few shakes of Parmesan instead, and that actually turned out really nice.

5. Didn’t put foil over it to bake.

Hubby loved it. Very much. So much that he thinks I should make meatballs to put in this dish each time I make it now. And he serenaded me with a loud burp, which of course means “Compliments to the chef.” Compliments accepted.

Now go out and made this!

Meem’s Spaghetti and Meatballs

Hubby grew up in an Italian family. His grandmother was from Sicily and a fantastic cook. He’s got memories of sneaking into the kitchen as a kid to swipe a meatball from the pot, and so I tried to reproduce it a while back. Of course, the recipe was only written down later by his mother, so it left a few questions unanswered, but it turned out well. But then I put the recipe aside and forgot about it.

Fast forward a year. We started going to a family-style Italian restaurant in our neighborhood, and their spaghetti and meatballs is out of this world.

It made me want more. So I made more. I made a few shortcuts, though, since I didn’t go to the store after deciding to make these.

First step: the meatballs. Combine breadcrumbs and grated romano cheese. Or in my case, combine breadcrumbs with grated parmesan cheese.

Add in milk, eggs, salt, pepper, minced onion, minced celery, and minced garlic. Or…. in my case, instead of celery, use celery salt and cut back on the regular salt, since I didn’t have celery.

Finally, add ground beef, shape into balls, and “cook.” The recipe didn’t specify how. I did some googling and learned that frying them in a pan is more authentic, but baking them is healthier and easier. I went with baking, though it did give them each one flat side. I think next time, I’ll fry them on the stove.

They came out looking like this. They seemed to be oozing a bit of cheese and fat, but they sure smelled good.

And now for the sauce!

Start off with a little olive oil, a can of tomato sauce and three cans of tomato paste.

Just sauté it for 20-30 minutes, stirring very frequently because it sticks and scorches if you don’t.

Then add minced onion, celery, and garlic. Again, I didn’t have celery, but I did add onion and garlic.

Cook it for another 10ish minutes, or until the veggies are soft. It’s getting pretty thick by this point.

Measure out the following: oregano, basil, salt, black pepper, sugar, and a bay leaf. The oregano and basil would have been better fresh, but you make due with what you have!

Add it to the tomato sauce, along with 6 cups of water.

Also add the meatballs, and then let it simmer (covered) for an hour, stirring every now and then.

At this point, I realized that what I *thought* was a fully box of spaghetti was really more like a quarter box of spaghetti. So I cooked fettucini instead. I guess it all tastes the same.

It was yummy! I think I may add less water next time, as the sauce seemed thin at the end, but it was good. I think if I had followed the instructions exactly and also fried the meatballs, it would have been especially amazing.

But it was worth the effort. We both ate too much.