Baked Stuffed Rigatoni

   

Are you like me?  Do you like to browse Pinterest looking for tasty things to cook and to eat?   Do you pin them and make note of them?   How many of them do you actually go back and cook?   Or do you just use your pins to inspire you?  I do a bit of both.  

I peruse and pin . . . then I get inspired and then I cook.  Sometimes exactly from the pin . . . and sometimes I use the pin as a starting base and then run with the ball! 

   

A few weeks back I was greatly intrigued by a recipe I saw on Pinterest for a Skillet Baked Stuffed Rigatoni by Heather Christo, which you can see here.   It was a bit fiddly, but it looked fabulously delicious, and not all that difficult to do!

  

The really fiddly part was stuffing the rigatoni.  They aren’t huge actually, so you will want to make sure you don’t cook the pasta until it is flimsy as you are going to have to poke a piping bag into those.  Things I learned from this process . . . room temperature cheese is easier to pipe, and do not overcook the pasta or it will split.

mmmm . . . little pasta tubes stuffed with cheese . . . layered with fresh basil and slathered with marinara sauce . . . dusted with more cheese and then baked . . . what’s not to like????  Of course, there can never be enough cheese and so I added some Dolcelatte to the filling, because . . .  I had it, it needed using and I love it!

I also added a nice layer of mozzarella to the top.   Heather didn’t do this, but once again, I had it to use and I used it!

Scrummo!   I enjoyed this the other day whilst the Toddster was enjoying the rare treat of a Steak and Kidney (ugh!!) pie. 

Coz . . . I have taste, and he doesn’t.   (I jest people, I jest!)  Seriously though this was really tasty . . . however fiddly.  Think cheese lasagne . . . except stuffed into eensie peensie  tubes.

Would I go to all that fuss again?  Probably not, but at least I gave it a go!   Much easier to just layer the stuff in a dish and bake it.   The end result would probably taste the same!  But if you aren’t afraid of a bit of fiddle, by all means go for it! 

    

*Baked Stuffed Rigatoni*
Serves 4

I am not usually one for fiddly recipes, but this looked so good I couldn’t resist.   I was right.  It was delicious!