Baked Ziti with Tempeh and Kale

Cheese.

Finally, victory in my quest to make baked ziti more nutritious! Protein and green vegetables outweigh the abundance of cheese, I say.

I went overly ambitious on this one, making the ricotta cheese and the tomato sauce from scratch (with tomatoes that I canned last summer). We definitely enjoyed the fresh cheese and sauce shining through, but one could make this recipe more easily by buying those ingredients.

I made the cheese first, and it was done draining by the time I had prepped everything else.

The kale was kind of an accident because the store strangely had no decent-looking spinach when I shopped, but the kale looked great. I bought boxed baby kale and steamed it on top of the pasta pot before dumping in the pasta to cook.

I had some leftover spinach, so that went in as well.

The tempeh was excellent, lightly browned with onion and garlic and then simmered in the sauce. If you do store-bought sauce, I would still take the time to brown the tempeh and let it sit in hot sauce for a while.

The Recipe:

1 box whole wheat ziti

10 oz kale (or spinach), steamed and chopped

1 package tempeh, crumbled

6 oz mozzarella cheese

6 oz ricotta cheese

1 quart tomato sauce (I made mine with onion, garlic, red pepper flakes, oregano, basil, crushed tomatoes, salt, pepper, and sugar)

Cook the ziti according to instructions on the box
Brown the crumbled tempeh for 2 minutes in olive oil. If making sauce from scratch, do this with the onions and garlic as you would with ground beef.
Simmer the tempeh in tomato sauce for at least 15 minutes.
Dump the ziti into a greased 9 x 13 pan. Top with the sauce, then spread out the kale and cheeses on top, reserving some mozzarella. Gently fold ingredients together to combine. Top with reserved mozzarella.
Bake at 350 for 30 minutes, uncovered, then broil until the cheese browns.

The Verdict:

Overall grade: A-

Overall reason: Great comfort food. Not quite healthy enough for an A.

Time to prepare: 30 minutes, plus 30 minutes of baking

Husband quote: "You've riCOTTA try it!"

Comments

Kitchen renovation!

BEFORE: AFTER: Still to come: a beautiful new induction range and some wood shelving on the left side, above the backsplash. And maybe the shelving unit on the wall facing the cabinets should be green, but we're going to live with a while before making that decision.

Adzuki Beans with Black Rice

I hope I don't turn any readers away by featuring cilantro in my first photo. My current food obsession is black rice. I was first introduced to it at Sushi Pure . It's purple when cooked, and I was completely smitten when purple sushi arrived at our table. I mean, purple sushi! It was like my birthday or something. Actually, it might have been my birthday, because I pretty much always have sushi on my birthday, but anyway. It's kind of sweet and has this great chewy texture. When I learned how healthy it is , my crush evolved to full-out love. Sushi Pure's Spicy Tuna Roll (photo from FoodSpotting.com) In my ongoing research for ingredients that are low in calories but high in nutrition, adzuki (also spelled azuki) beans came up. I learned that these are the sweet red beans used in Japanese desserts, including red bean ice cream, which I've been obsessed with since I was a kid. But since turning them into ice cream probably negates the health benef

Cambodian Lemongrass Stir-Fry

I recommend going heavy on the peanuts I recently finally branched out and tried something new at Angkor Cambodian Restaurant , and now I'll never branch out ever again because my new favorite dish is too good. They call it Cha Krung, though I've seen a lot of other spellings in my attempt to find recipes. It's a lemongrass stir-fry and they do it with green beans, carrot, onion, and jalapeno, with peanuts on top. The peanuts are amazing in this, but I also really love the way they stir-fry the jalapeno as a vegetable, by removing the seeds and veins and slicing it thin. In my version above I used what I had, which was broccoli, eggplant from the garden, thai chilies instead of the jalapeno (but I'm going to grow jalapenos next year for this purpose), and fresh basil since I found a lot of recipes calling for it. And tofu, though it sounds like chicken is most traditional. I was a bit discouraged when researching recipes because I would need to acquire fresh lemongra

Adventures of a healthy-ish pseudo-foodie

Search This Blog