Dinner With Our Friends (aka Don't You Wish That You Were Eating At My House)

Well, I didn't just feed my guests cupcakes on Saturday night, so I guess my readers want to know about what I made for dinner (plus I was threatened that if I didn't post my recipes from that night...well, who knows what they would have done to me).



Anyway, it's hard to get too crazy with your dinner choices when you have more than a couple of people coming over especially since you want to cater to your guests' preferences (like Paul's dislike of pretty much most things green.....hahah), so I usually make something that is pretty universally liked. I stuck with a couple of baked pasta dishes that seemed to be a hit with our guests since there was very little food leftover.



Here are the recipes:



Baked Ziti with Pesto from Quick From Scratch Pasta by Food & Wine Books



1/2 pound ziti (I used penne since the store was out of ziti)

2 tbs oil

1 onion, chopped

2 cloves garlic, mince

2 cups canned crushed tomatoes in thick puree

1/4 teas salt

1 bay leaf

1/2 teas fresh-ground black pepper

1 cup ricotta cheese

1 1/2 cups grated, packaged mozzarella cheese

1/3 cup grated Parmesan cheese (you can omit this if you want)

1/4 cup pesto (store-bought or homemade)



1)Preheat oven to 350. Oil (or spray) an 8 by 8 inch baking dish.



2) In a large pot of boiling, salted water, cook the pasta for 7 minutes. It will be partially cooked.

Drain, rinse with cold water and drain again.



3) In a medium saucepan, heat 1 1/2 tb of the oil over moderately low heat. Add onions and

cook, stirring occasionally until translucent. Add the garlic and cook, stirring, for 30 seconds. Add tomatoes, salt and bay leaf. Bring to a simmer over moderate heat and cook until very thick, about 10 minutes. Stir in 1/4 teas. pepper and remove the bay leaf.



4) In a bowl, combine the ricotta, 1 cup of the mozzarella, about half the Parmesan (if using), the pesto and the remaining 1/4teas. pepper.



5) Put half the pasta in into the baking dish and top with about a third of the sauce. Spread the ricotta mixture on the sauce in an even layer. Cover with remaining pasta and then then the remaining sauce. Tope with the remianing 1/2 cup mozzarella nd the remaining Parmesan. Drizzle with the remaining 1/2 tbs oil. Bake until bubbling, about 30 minutes. Let sit 10 minutes before cutting.

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While that recipe was good, this next one was great. I believe that Dave was debating on if he should lick the pan after we were done eating it! It's a Pioneer Woman recipe again and right now, she is batting 100% with the recipes of hers that I have tried. It's not even close to being low-fat, so maybe you don't really want to look at the recipe. One thing that I did do differently is that I cooked my spaghetti in all of the water that the chicken cooked in (she tells you to cook it in 2 cups of the chicken water--that's too much work for me), but you could probably just cook it in plain water if you are really lazy (I won't judge)! I am sure that this would have made excellent leftovers, but we wouldn't know since there wasn't any!



http://thepioneerwoman.com/cooking/recipes/chicken-spaghetti.pdf