Baked Ziti With Pork Ragu And More

Cold days always leave me wanting warm comfort foods for dinner. So a couple weekends ago, I started off thinking about mac and cheese and ended up deciding to make baked ziti with pork ragu for Sunday night's dinner. I also had been wanting to try the mozzarella balls on the last page of the January issue of Gourmet. Since I would be cooking for my boyfriend and one of his friends, I thought this would be a good night to make dinner plus an appetizer.

To minimize the cooking for Sunday, after I made those millions of cupcakes (ok, slight exaggeration) on Saturday afternoon, I made the pork ragu as well. I got the recipe from Food Made Fast: Pasta (Williams-Sonoma), but you can always just make your favorite meat sauce.

This one started with a mirepoix (chopped carrots, onions, and celery) sauteed in some olive oil.


To that I added fennel seeds and ground pork.


Next in: some red wine, canned tomatoes, and tomato paste.


You let this simmer an hour so the flavors combine. It also helped that I was making mine the day before I would be using it because this gave the sauce even more time to soak up all the flavors.


The next night, I went to my boyfriend's place, armed with my homemade pork ragu. I boiled a box of ziti for about half the cooking time instructed on the box. After draining the ziti, I mixed it with about 5 cups of the ragu and some parmesan and mozzarella cheeses in a baking dish. I covered the whole mixture with more cheese. (I'm a big believer of there's no such thing as too much cheese.) I popped this into the oven, covered with foil, at 400 degrees and left it to bake for 20 minutes... and in the meantime made those mozzarella balls.

Fried Mozzarella Balls (Gourmet, January 2009)

Ingredients
About 5 cups vegetable oil
1 lb drained marinated bocconcini (small mozzarella balls), patted dry
3 large eggs, beaten
1 cup plain fine dry bread crumbs

Preparation
Heat about 1 1/2 inches oil to 360°F in a 3 1/2- to 4-qt heavy saucepan.
Meanwhile, double-coat bocconcini by dipping in eggs, then in bread crumbs, and repeating. Transfer to a sheet of wax paper.
Working in batches of 10, lower balls into oil with a slotted spoon and fry, turning occasionally, until golden brown, about 30 seconds per batch. Transfer to paper towels to drain and season with salt. (Return oil to 360°F between batches.)

I bought a container of 19 small mozzarella balls -- a little less than half a pound -- so I halved the recipe. I was a bit nervous about making these because Jenna at rosaberry told me she had some trouble with hers. I dried all of the mozzarella balls off very thoroughly, and I was especially cautious as I rolled each ball in the egg and breadcrumbs. I made sure to really push the breadcrumbs into the egg. I left the breaded balls sitting for a few minutes while I heated the oil and threw together a caesar salad. My hope was that the egg would dry a little and really hold the crumbs in place. And somehow it worked.

I always test to see whether my oil is hot enough by taking some leftover breadcrumbs and egg, mixing them into a little ball, and dropping that in the oil. If the oil sizzles, you know it's ready.

Still being overly cautious, I dropped the balls individually into the hot oil (about six to eight balls at a time), rolled them around, and removed them to a paper towel to dry.


I served them with some leftover canned tomatoes from making the pork ragu and a can of red sauce seasoned with basil and garlic.


At that point, it was time to uncover the ziti and melt the cheese on top. After about 10 minutes, the cheese was to my liking, and I set the ziti on the stovetop to rest while we continued munching on salad and fried mozzarella balls.


All in all it was a great dinner and really satisified my cravings for comfort food...