Tasty Tuesday!

It's that time again it's Tasty Tuesday brought to us by our friends at Forever Wherever! Tonight's meal was from Ina Garten's "Barefoot Contessa Family Style" cookbook and it is her recipe for Five Cheese Penne. Can I just tell you how amazingly simple and fantastically tasty this is??

The gist of the recipe is: Preheat your oven to 500. Then par boil penne pasta. While the pasta is cooking, mix together in a large bowl two cups of heavy cream, one cup of crushed tomatoes (with tomato puree... Ina recommends Redpack), two tablespoons of ricotta, a handful of fresh basil leaves, torn up, and the following cheese (in varied amounts to your liking: gorgonzola, pecorino romano, fontina, fresh mozzarella and/or parmesan) to me it sounds like six cheeses but I'm not going to argue with Ina. (I used half a bag (or so) of Sargento's "Italian Blend" of cheese (which includes fontina, romano, etc.) a good bit of gorgonzola crumbles, Sargento shredded mozzarella and shredded parmesan. I put in a touch of fresh ground black pepper and a bit of salt. Once the pasta is al dente drain it in a collander and add it to your cheese mixture. Then pour out the pasta and cheese sauce into individual oven-proof dishes. Place a touch of butter on top of each and bake for 7-10 minutes (or until the cheese sauce is bubbling and browning a bit).

WOW! It was really, really good and very easy to make. Who doesn't love something that has a 7-10 minute bake time? It's faster than chocolate chip cookies for goodness sake! I took Ina's advice and added more gorgonzola and parmesan than the straight reciepe calls for, but you can play with the cheese amounts. You can also adjust how much cheese sauce you want by placing your boiled pasta into your oven-proof dishes first and then pouring the cheese sauce over each individual serving.

This was a winner and the fresh basil was a nice touch. Woo-Hoo!