One skillet, start to finish, for easy baked ziti

When MT & I bought our house from her sister, who had inherited it from their great aunt Rosa (rest her generous soul), a few things came with it. An old “Universal” food grinder, for example, as I recounted when I decided to resurrect my mom’s nut roll recipe for a test kitchen article. Some old manual lawn mowers MT prefers for trimming our grass. A beautiful vintage gas stove (not connected, of course) in the basement I still haven’t figured out how to turn into the showpiece it deserves to be.

Among those treasures was a classic iron skillet on a basement shelf. I kept promising myself to rescue it, give it a rigorous cleaning and re-season it for use. It took 19 years, but I finally brought it back into the light, thanks to this single-skillet baked ziti recipe from America’s Test Kitchen I stumbled on while flipping through channels.

The skillet cleaned up great, and after heating it to dry and then to absorb some oil it looked like new (an observation made by others). It now sits in our kitchen eager to both be of service and prove, as solid iron skillets have proven for ages, that these are heirloom cookware for the generations.

I made this ziti for my vegetarian sister during her most recent visit to the old homestead in West Hazleton. The advantage is obvious: You don’t need to pull a pot out to cook the pasta, and certainly don’t need to stove top any sauce and mix it all into a third casserole dish for the “baked” part.

I confess a wee leariness about how well the pasta would cook in a pan, but covering it (I had to use tin foil, as I have found no accompanying lid) helps assure the noodles reach al dente in just three cups of liquid. And you don’t waste the pasta water by draining, it just evaporates enough to become part of the sauce. It is very advisable to follow the directions and stir regularly to make sure all the pasta gets into the water long enough to cook, and it took longer to get to the right texture than it would have in a regular roiling pot with quarts of water, but it worked great.

Using charred grape tomatoes as the base for the sauce was novel to me. It worked well, but if I try this again (and I likely will), I’ll use more tomatoes and give them a little more char time to add to the flavor. I’ll also add a good bit more garlic, probably at least double. MT in particular said it could use more, and I agreed, even though I had put in an extra clove or two.

As is my habit I added more parm and mozzarella than it calls for, but in any future iteration I’m sure to add a lot more of each. And maybe more tomato paste. In short, the flavor was very good, it got plenty of praise, but we agreed it could have had a bit more of what was already there.

Dobru chut!

Baked ziti in a single skillet (America’s Test Kitchen)

1½ pounds grape tomatoes

6 cloves of garlic, pressed.

1 teaspoon tomato paste

¼ teaspoon red pepper flakes

12 ounces ziti

3 cups water

4 ounces mozzarella, grated

¼ cup fresh basil, minced.

½ cup parmesan cheese grated

Heat an iron skillet. It’s important it is hot before adding the tomatoes, or they won’t char properly.

Add 1 tablespoon olive oil and 1 teaspoon salt to tomatoes and toss. Put in skillet and cook about 10 minutes, stirring occasionally until all are nicely charred. Add garlic, tomato paste and red pepper flakes and stir, cooking about 30 seconds until you can smell the garlic. Remove from heat and mash tomatoes down a bit with hand masher

Add ziti to pan with three cups of water. Turn burner to high and bring to a boil, then turn down to simmer. Cook with lid on, stirring frequently to make sure pasta gets done, about 10 minutes

Turn on oven broiler.

When past is done al dente, turn off heat. Add parmesan and basil, season with salt and pepper. Top with mozzarella and put under broiler for about 5 minutes until cheese is melted and brown. Watch frequently to avoid burning. Remove and serve.