I remembered reading a recipe from my hometown cookbook that used spaghetti as a "pie crust." However, I knew that it was very calorie dense, so I created my own version. The one I made will feed 4--but if you upped the amount of meat, it could easily yield 6 servings."
Ingredients
4 servings of spaghetti
1 cup Parmesan-Romano cheese, shredded
8 oz fat free cottage cheese (I drain mine to get all the liquid out)
3/4-1 cup No-Sugar-Added Spaghetti Sauce (I used Ragu)
1/2 lb. ground beef, browned in 1-2 tsp olive oil
Black olives for garnish
Cook spaghetti until al dente, then drain. Cool pasta slightly (I used this time to brown the hamburger), and place into a pie plate. Push down on the plate and up the sides to create a crust. Spoon about 1/2 cup Parmesan-Romano cheese into the crust and let melt a little, then spoon cottage cheese over the spaghetti. Mix the spaghetti sauce and ground beef, then place on top of cottage cheese mixture. Lastly, add the rest of the Parmesan-Romano cheese. Bake in a 400 degree oven for 20-30 minutes (I baked for 20, and thought 25 would have been better). Let sit for 5-10 minutes and garnish with black olives.
VERDICT: Very good! I don't feel as though I need to tweak this recipe, because it stands on its own. If I had added an entire pound of beef, it would easily feed 6, but with only 1/2 pound, it wouldn't have a lot of heart to it. Anyway, I really like the nutty flavor that the top of the spaghetti pie gets as it cooks, and would recommend that you cook it for at least 25 minutes so that more of the top spaghetti takes on the flavor. <3 Since we're trying to clean out our pantry, I haven't bought much for sides, but we had a banana salad with the pasta (I'll post it tomorrow, because it's a great Halloween recipe). However, I would have loved to serve this pie with French bread and olive oil.
No comments:
Post a Comment