Casserole Derby

Okay, so Jess asked me for some casserole and slow-cooker recipes, and I thought this would be a good place to collect them.

Mostly I don't use a recipe for casseroles, but I do make them a lot, and I always make two at a time (one for dinner, one for the freezer).

One thing to note is that these casseroles take a loooooong time to thaw, like an hour on defrost in the microwave before they're ready for the oven. I've often taken them out and put them in the fridge the night before and found them still frozen by dinnertime. It's still convenient to have work-free dinners around, but they do take time.

Let's start with Baked Ziti
I came up with this after watching the movie In Good Company, and after the scene where Marg Hellgenberger drops the baked ziti and then pukes because she's pregnant, Ian said "aw that looked good. I want baked ziti." So, I came up with this dish which has now become one of our standards because it meets the golden triangle of criteria: easy, nutritious, cheap. The fat is a lot lower than your average lasagna because of the cottage cheese, and the italian-style vegetables include lima beans, which add protein. You can pack a lot of vegetables in here. This has displaced lasagna at our house, something I never thought possible.

Ingredients

• ziti noodles
• 1.5 jars tomato sauce
• 3 cups or more frozen italian-style vegetables
• a clove or two of garlic
  
• 1 egg
  
• 500 mL low-fat cottage cheese
• pinch nutmeg
• basil, oregano (fresh or dried) to taste, salt and pepper to taste (depends on the sauce you use)
  
• one ball part-skim mozarella cheese, grated (you probably won't use it all)
  

1. Preheat oven to 350, 375 if you want to hurry it up
2. Cook pasta (don't overcook as it will get baked later), drain, set aside
3. Combine frozen vegetables with some tomato sauce (I do this in a 4-C measuring cup), and microwave to thaw
4. mince garlic finely, or crush, and add to veggies, along with basil and oregano.
   
5. In the largest bowl you have, beat the egg and mix in the cottage cheese. Add nutmeg and about a third of the mozarella.
6. Add the cooked pasta to the cottage cheese mixture and toss to coat. This step gets all the cheesy creamy goodness inside those ziti tubes and ups the yummy quotient considerably.
7. Put a bit of sauce in the bottom of 2 casserole dishes, spread a quarter of the the pasta in each dish, then a quarter of the veggies, maybe a bit of extra mozza, then repeat the layers.
8. Top with mozzarella
9. Bake one casserole in your prepared oven until bubbly and melty and good. At 350 this will take around 40 mins, maybe 25 mins at 375.
10. Freeze the other casserole, unbaked, tightly covered with plastic wrap or foil.