New Favorite Challenge Week 1

Over at Sweet Anna's, she has challenged us to get out and find some new recipe favorites by digging out those cook books that have gathered dust on them, trying a new recipe from a blog or using one of those millions of recipes that you've torn out of a magazine, but just never get around to trying. Get out of that recipe dinner rut and join the challenge, too.

This week I grabbed a cook book I got for Christmas last year, but may have only used once: Ina Garten, Barefoot Contessa Family Style.  The Penne with Five Cheeses called my name the minute I looked at the recipe. And with some revision I had all I needed to make it. Here is my adapted version of what Ina had.

Four Cheese Baked Elbows

Kosher Salt
1 cup milk (I used whole or you can use heavy cream)
1 cup tomato sauce or crushed tomatoes. (I had an open jar of tomato Alfredo sauce that I used)
1 cup shredded mozzarella cheese
1 cup shredded cheddar cheese
2 Tablespoons cottage cheese (or ricotta)
6 fresh basil leaves, chopped
1/2 lb of your choice of noodles (I used elbows)
2 Tablespoons unsalted butter

Preheat oven to 500 degrees.

Bring salted water to a boil for your noodles. You will only parboil the noodles for about 4 minutes (or half of what the box says to do).

Combine all ingredients except the noodles and butter into a large bowl and mix well.

Add drained noodles to the ingredients in the mixing bowl, tossing to combine.

Put the mixture into a baking dish, sprinkle with breadcrumbs (optional), place the butter on top and bake until bubbly and brown on top 10-15 minutes.

This was seriously SO good. Kenny and Shane were both hesitant about it (come on...cheese and noodles, how can that be bad?). But they both loved it.