Cheese and Pasta in a Pot

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Growing up it was understood..

Births, deaths, illnesses - you brought food to the family.

It's a practice that I watched my mother and members of my family and community display over and over and over throughout my life. When a baby is born you brought a meal to the family so that the mother had something nourishing to eat without having to make it herself. If there's a death in the family, you brought food so that the surviving members had something to eat at a time when grief often means that cooking is the last thing anyone wants to do.

Cheese and Pasta in a Pot was that dish for my mother and is for me to this day. It is easy, filling, can be made ahead of time and frozen to be reheated later, and is something that pretty much everyone will be happy to eat. I still make it when someone in my life is going through one of those times and the last thing they want to do is worry about what to plan for dinner.

You can make it in a ceramic baking dish like this one, if you'd like, although I prefer to make it in a deep foil pan so that the person I'm making it for doesn't have to worry about getting a dish back to me afterward. It's made with pretty simple ingredients, and you can modify it however you'd like, based on your preferences and tastes.

(As an aside, this is also just a really easy, delicious "for no reason at all" dish that is perfect for dinner anytime.)

Here's what you will need -

• 1-2 jars of your favorite pasta sauce. Do I make homemade sauce for this? Nope.

• A box of rotini or small shells dry pasta

• 1 16oz container of sour cream

• A lot of shredded mozzarella cheese - honestly, this is a "measure with your heart" recipe. I usually get the 4 cup size bag and use every single bit of it.

• A container of grated parmesan cheese. Now, you can use that cellulose stuff, but I am going to recommend actual grated parmesan cheese or, even better, a parmesan/romano cheese blend. Yum!

• 1 pound of hamburger or Italian sausage - optional

It's very easy to make this dish vegetarian, if you'd like, by omitting the meat. My instructions are going to include meat, but feel free to omit it, if you'd prefer.

Here's what you do -

First, spray your baking pan, whether ceramic or foil, with cooking spray to keep it from sticking and then set it aside.

Cook the pasta according to the package directions. Once cooked, drain the pasta water from it and then rinse it well with fresh water. Let it drain to get rid of as much of the water as possible. You don't want the pasta to be holding any water when you begin assembling the dish or your sauce will become watery/soupy at the bottom.

If using hamburger or Italian sausage, brown the meat in a skillet until no longer pink. Drain it well and then in a bowl combine it with the pasta sauce and mix it all together.

In the bottom of the baking dish place a couple spoonfuls of the sauce/meat mixture and spread it around to coat. Now are going to begin to layer our ingredients in the pan. First you'll place about 1/3 of the cooked pasta in the bottom and then pour 1/3 of the pasta/meat mixture evenly over it. Next put spoonfuls of sour cream, again about 1/3 of the container, on top of the pasta/meat mixture, sprinkle parmesan on top of that, and then add a layer of the mozzarella cheese.

You'll repeat those layers until you've either used up all of your ingredients or reached the top of the dish. Your very top layer should be mozzarella cheese.

At this point you can do one of two things - either preheat your oven to 350 degrees and bake it until the mozzarella cheese is hot, bubbly, and beginning to brown and the dish is heated through, or cover the dish with either foil or the dish's lid and put it in the refrigerator so that it's ready to be taken to whoever you are making it for.

And that's it!

When making it for someone for whatever reason, I usually bring a loaf of fresh Italian bread and a green salad with it, which you can also do if you're making it for your own dinner. The bottom line, though, is that it is easy, it is delicious, and it a great dish for those times when you just want to make things a tiny bit easier for someone going through a difficult time.