Triumph of the Baked Pasta

I hate buying pre-packaged frozen food at the store because I think its bland and bad for you, but I love to put together various one-dish dinners and freeze them myself because they are tasty and convenient.

Long a staple in our freezer has been various forms of lasagna we like; with turkey sausage, without, zucchini, sometimes with goat cheese, yum. Well I tried a new “format” this weekend that I say wins hands down over the traditional long wide noodles and stacked presentation.

Basically instead of going through the palavra of boiling the noodles and laying everything together, I instead simply used some penne tossed in tomato sauce as the main component and then mixed in layers of mozzarella, parmesan, and basil leaves. The result was a fantastically tasty baked pasta dinner that could provide an excellent canvas for the addition of any of our other favorite ingredients, and doesn’t suffer from the sometimes dried-out ricotta layer that is so necessary for structurally sound lasagna. Yum!

(Shoot, I should’ve taken a picture)