Thursday, July 31, 2014

Tortellini Bake

I am back in the kitchen!! I haven't made anything worth blogging about in months. But the offspring and I have moved!!! We have a big beautiful kitchen. And with this move was a promise of home cooked meals every night. I didn't think that plan through at all! I have an insanely spoiled child. So promising home cooked meals every night means I am getting to know my new kitchen very very well. My goal is to start teaching her how to open a can or boil water.

I will admit I love being in the kitchen and cooking for my family. It warms my heart & soul completely!

This recipe is stupid proof. If you can read you can cook this. Well, maybe I shouldn't state that. My eldest sister could even ruin noodles when she cooked. Considering my mom busted her tail and worked two job, while I was a kid, the sister cooked often. I was a really skinny kid. Hmmm.....maybe I'll invite her over for a few weeks and see how much weight I can lose now! 

So we begin.....
                      
                     Tortellini Bake

Ingredients:

~1 19oz bag of cheese filled tortellini.
~1 15oz jar of alfredo sauce
~1/2 cup marinara sauce
~1/2 cup mozzarella cheese
~1/2 cup parmesan cheese

That's it! 

            Heat your oven to 350*F

Start by cooking your tortellini as directed. Which means boil some water and empty the frozen tortellini's into the pot. When they all are floating they are done. They do not take long to cook at all. I love that! I suppose you could use tortellini filled with whatever you want. Probably would hurt any right? Well, you might not want to take my advice considering I had to call my cooking guru to ask her how to broil:/

Transfer your cook tortellini to a 8X8 dish. I actually have one! 

Now add your sauces. Again, it is an entire jar of alfredo sauce and 1/2 a cup of the marinara (my autocorrect keeps changing this to Maryanne. Please don't cook Maryanne.) I bought a garden chunky sauce or something like that. It had big chunks of tomatoes and peppers in it. I ended up using about a cup of marinara. No reason other than it was chunky and the color was pretty when combined with the alfredo. Once the sauces are added stir that dish up! 

It might now look similar to this:

Even if it doesn't look like this, who cares. You can't mess up with these ingredients. 

Now top it with both cheeses and cook it! So here's where I strayed a bit. I am now shopping in a new grocery story and it took me HOURS! I got tired of wandering around the grocery store and "forgot" parmesan cheese. The truth is it is expensive and had I even found it I probably would not have bought it. So I just used an entire 8oz block of mozzarella cheese. It was glorious!

Bake for 15 minutes. 

After my timer went off it was a gooey cheesy awesome mess! However, I wanted the cheese brown not white! So I called my mom...oops I mean my cooking guru. She suggested I broil it. After then explaining to me where the broiler was and how to do that it looked perfect!

               Tortellini perfection!

Watch it close while it is broiling! That sucker browned up really fast.

I served it with some twisty garlic bread sticks. Probably should have added a salad but BLAH....lettuce makes me sad.

I was so hungry and dying to devour it so  I completed forgot to take a picture of the finished product on a place. But you should get the point. Right?

And that is what is for dinner.....