skillet baked ziti pomodoro
In general, baked pasta has never been my favorite: not lasagna, not stuffed shells, not the square-cut and saucy spaghetti pie from the special occasion memories of my youth spent at the local Portillos-Barnelli’s. It’s not the baking I don’t like. It’s baked ricotta cheese.
As much as I love fluffy smooth ricotta on a grilled and olive oiled piece of sourdough or dolloped fresh on a vodka sauce, the oven truly brings out its worst. Oven ricotta is mealy, gritty, and pasty at best and has the texture of environmentally-friendly shipping materials at worst. Every time I bake a pasta with ricotta, I wish I hadn’t.
But then there is mascarpone, aka Italian cream cheese, the savior of this baked ziti. Thicker than cream and smoother than ricotta, it softens the homemade pomodoro sauce into a silky base that doesn’t dry out in the oven. Because it, too, counts as cheese, you are also able to use less cheese for topping. The result is a dish full of pockets of everything good: melty, stringy, acidic, chewy, and sweet, with craggy edges of crackly-crisp pasta corners in more bites than not.
Like all baked pastas, baked ziti is as ideal to make and bring for someone else as it is to fill in the days between holiday cooking sprints when looking at a cutting board makes you want to break glass. Baked ziti is a giver, not a taker. If that’s not the holiday spirit, fight me.
RECIPE
The ultimate skillet baked ziti has absolutely no ricotta. Homemade pomodoro sauce is simmered gently on the stove before being folded together with par-cooked ziti and a silky secret ingredient: mascarpone cheese. A blend of mozzarella and parmesan cheeses mixed throughout and blanketing the top gives a cheesy, stretchy finish.
Effortful time: 10 minutes
Total time: 1 hour
Serves 4
YOU NEED
1 tbsp olive oil
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 tbsp. double concentrated tomato paste
1 28 oz can tomato purée or crushed tomatoes
1 tbsp dried basil
1 tsp dried parsley
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp chili flakes or Calabrian chiles in oil (if you have them; don’t buy them just for this)
Cracked black pepper, to taste
4 oz mascarpone cheese
12 oz ziti or other similar pasta, like penne or rigatoni
1/4 cup grated Parmesan
3/4 cup shredded mozzarella
1/2 cup water
make it
Sauté the aromatics. Heat olive oil in a wide oven-safe skillet over medium heat. Add minced garlic and cook until fragrant but not brown, about a minute. Add the chili flakes (if using) and tomato paste and smash into the oil with the back of a spoon for about 10 seconds.
Cook your sauce. Immediately pour in tomatoes and turn heat down to low. Add basil, parsley, salt, and pepper and stir to combine. Simmer at low heat, partially covered, for 40 minutes.
Prep for assembly. After 40 minutes, heat salted water for pasta. Preheat the oven to 400°F (I used convection at 375°F, which I recommend if you have an oven that will do this—it makes the edges crispier.
Cook pasta. At least 3 minutes less than the package directions say to. You definitely want it crunchy. Drain.
Assemble the ziti. Over in your sauce skillet, turn off the heat. Add the mascarpone in dollops and loosely stir; you don’t want to fully combine the cheese into the sauce as much as you want to swirl them together. Add the pasta and gently fold together until the pasta is properly and evenly saucy. Top with the parm and the mozz. There should be pockets of mascarpone peeking through still.
Rehydrate the ziti. Before putting in the oven, add the water, pouring it into a corner. This is just to keep everything saucy.
Cook the ziti. Bake uncovered for 15 minutes and let it rest for 5 minutes before serving so no one accidentally touches the molten ziti lava to the roof of their mouth and ruins their entire week. If you like crispier edges, you can switch to your broiler and broil for a minute or two longer.