Spaghetti Pie

As promised, here is my family recipe for spaghetti pie. Well, it's not really a family recipe, it's actually from my mom's old best friend. We used to spend a week during the summer down the shore (yes, I'm clearly from Jersey originally with that phrase) with the B's when my brother and I were young. The B's had two daughters, one a year older than me and one a year younger, and a younger son. We would spend the days on the beach, eating sandwiches out of a cooler, and all of us would plop down, exhausted, for dinner. So Mrs. B had a handful of family-friendly recipes that didn't take much effort to put on the table for 5 hungry kids. This is one of them.

I remember thinking this was the greatest thing ever when my mom would make it at home. The novel idea that spaghetti could be a pie really sold me. As my last post describes, my mom is Italian and used to make spaghetti and meatballs a lot. I can't blame her; she could make a big batch of meatballs and freeze some for future meals and, with my brother and I growing, spaghetti was a quick, easy and CHEAP, since we sure could eat, way to fill our bellies. Plus meatballs are my far my dad's favorite meal (seriously...if he doesn't get them every week he gets cranky. Which  might explain why he was so happy for my meatballs last week...hmmmm. I'm on to you dad!), so she could make him happy at the same time. But having spaghetti and meatballs every.single.week got boring. Real boring. And, at the time, my brother and I were not old enough to fend for ourselves (that came later and may explain why I love cooking so much--I would cook a random recipe when it was my turn to make dinner and it broke up the family meals that I now miss living by myself but at the time realllllly didn't do it for me) so this was a perfect solution...to me, spaghetti pie and meatballs was an entirely different meal than spaghetti and meatballs. Listen, I didnt say I was a smart kid...

But anyway, spaghetti pie would have me running to the table faster than you can say chicken bundles (another Mrs. B recipe that I'll be blogging soon). And, to be honest, it still does...

I'd like to thank my fabulous mother for making this with me and for waiting to do the next step before I took an adequate number of pictures. Having that extra set of hands means more action shots! Yay!

Spaghetti Pie
Downloadable PDF here

Ingredients:

1 lb. spaghetti

1 small container (15 oz) of part-skim ricotta

2 eggs

½ cup grated parmesan

1 bag shredded mozzarella

Olive oil

Tomato sauce

Directions

1.  Cook your pasta until al dente. Drain pasta water and toss pasta in the pot with olive oil. Preheat oven to 350F.

2. Combine ricotta, eggs and grated parmesan in a bowl using a hand mixer.

3. Add ricotta mixture and a few large spoonfuls of tomato sauce to oiled pasta. Mix well.

4. Oil a pie baking dish. Put pasta mixture into the baking dish, making sure to press the mixture against the sides. Add additional tomato sauce on top.

5. Cover with tinfoil and bake for 30 minutes. Remove from oven and add shredded mozzarella on top. Return to oven, uncovered, to melt the cheese.

6. Once cheese is melted, remove the pie from the oven. Let sit for 15 minutes or the pasta will not stay in pie form. I also recommend serving this with additional sauce if you're not serving it with meatballs--some of your eaters may want to add it to the pie. Enjoy!!!