What's for Dinner? 1-10-11

Baked Ravioli is what is for dinner! Here is what I used: Frozen Cheese ravioli, one left over spaghetti sauce (Prego Veggie Smart) without meat from when I made Lasagna (then froze the sauce), and one left over sauce with meat in it from when I made Spaghetti earlier this week.You'll probably start seeing two patterns in my cooking: We love Italianish food and I'm sometimes very imprecise. We are not afraid of carbs here, and I don't like measuring sometimes. When it comes to stuff like this, it's not really essential that you have the exact amount of sauce I do. It's all a preference; go with what feels natural!

 

 Step one is to boil water. I know you probably know that you have to do that, but I can't leave anything out. It's a thing with recipe sharing.

 When the water is boiling, add the ravioli. The beauty of this recipe is you can use as many or as few raviolis as you want. For us I cooked 14 (I had the left overs for lunch today).

 The raviolis won't take too long to cook, but in the mean time spread some of the sauce in the bottom of a pan and turn on your oven to 375 degrees. The key with keeping prep short is to heat the sauce before hand. That way everything is basically heated through before you pop it in the oven. Then all you have to do is wait for the cheese to melt. I'm all about the short cuts. Since I used leftovers, I didn't have to use a bunch of meat or anything, but if you were making a large batch of this, you could use 1lb of ground beef or turkey, brown it up, and combine it with a jar of sauce. We're saucy people around here, so I used a lot of sauce in comparison to the amount of raviolis I used. If you are less saucy, this recipe will still taste great if you reduce the amount of sauce. Ok, i think that's all I have to say about the sauce.

 When the raviolis are done (you'll know they're done because they'll start to float), drain them and arrange the first layer in the bottom of the pan. You're going to end up doing a lasagna style layering. After the first layer, put some sauce down, and add a second layer. I kind of staggered them so the second layer was on top and between the bottom later, in the space between the raviolis. I hope that made sense. Anyway, after you have the second layer, finish with the sauce. It should look kinda like this:

 

Then top with cheese and pop it in the oven for 15 or 20 minutes.Again, I didn't measure the cheese. I just went with what looked good and appetizing. You could certianly use less cheese if you wanted.

  

 When the cheese is melted and the sauce is bubbly pull it out and serve it up. We had wine with ours. :)