Cook Dates: Octobe 10 & December 22, 2025
I’m catching up on posting about some cooking I’ve done over the past few months. Today’s recipe is Baked Ziti with sausage meatballs and spinach from the NY Times (First bunch of people who follow the link will get free access. I couldn’t find ziti pasta so, with assistance from the recipe, I went for penne which is just a smaller version of ziti. I cooked this twice. When I made it in October for a family dinner I wasn’t a big fan of it but the family loved it and Carla asked me to make it for our annual Christmas dinner with friends.
I liked it a lot more the second time; the only difference I can identify is I forgot the spinach the second time because I was busy talking with everyone and had the the whole mixture into the baking pan before I realized I left it out. I don’t think that is enough to have changed my mind. Take a look and judge for yourself if you think it is worth making.The pictures are a mix from the 2 cooks.
Let’s get into it; as always, I provide a “Before” picture.
As you can see: lot’s of cheeses. The big thing that jumped out at me when I saw the recipe originally is the clever way to make the meatballs. We take 4 sweet Italian sausages and section them into bits and roll them into tiny balls. The number of meatballs we are supposed to come out of 4 sausages does not evenly divided. So I cut each link in half; each half into quarters; finally each quarter into eighths. Measure chop everything else and we are ready to cook. Those aren’t marshmallows on the right side of the picture; they are little fresh Mozzarella balls.
We start cooking by browning the meatballs in olive oil.
Remove excess fat and brown the onions and then chopped fresh oregano in the remaining fat scraping up the fond the brown sticky bits).
In go the tomatoes and sausages.
Add the spinach (unless you forget like I did the second time I made it)
Meanwhile I combined a couple of the cheeses and got ready to add it to the sauce
Mix it all together in a large bowl
Pour into a 9×13 baking pan and top with the mozzarella bits
When the mozzarella melts and the sauce is bubbly it’s ready to serve.
Find the best plating picture (this is from October 5, 2025)
This is a great warm and hearty winter dinner. By definition it rates 4 stars since those stars mean I’d serve it to friends and we did.
Rating: ★★★★ 4 Stars
