For a recent holiday gathering, I wanted to make a baked pasta dish to serve as a simple anchor to the otherwise appetizer and dessert-heavy offerings. Unlike past holiday parties, I wanted to try something different from macaroni and cheese, and found Cook's Illustrated Creamy Baked Four Cheese Pasta recipe.
And given that I had almost equal parts leftover cheese and cream, the following week I decided to make the Baked Four-Cheese Pasta with Tomatoes and Basil varient of the original recipe.
Both recipes were very pretty easy to construct, particularly for CI recipes, but definitely used a number of large dishes (pot for pasta, saucepan for bechamel, bowl for melting cheese, baking dish) which made clean up somewhat onerous. That being said, the result was pretty tasty though each bite definitely felt heavy and rich, even with the second version which had more lightness from the tomatoes (I omitted the fresh basil for a bit of dried basil). I am not sure if this will be a repeat dish in the future, but I do think it's a good hearty winter main course or side.
(with Tomatoes)
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