Looking for a great comfort food EASY spaghetti dish? This Cheese and Pesto Italian Spaghetti Bake is an oldie but a goodie and one we turn to frequently. Plus, I adore Paula Deen, and well, this is an adaption of one of her great recipes!
I love cookbooks. I have a ridiculous amount of cookbooks.
I almost never follow a recipe fully and I’m always substituting or adding my own twist to every meal we make from a recipe.
However, my over flowing bookshelf of cookbooks needed a little dusting off and when Tina made This Week’s Cravings a recipe from our favorite cookbook, I knew it was time.
The problem is, which cookbook.
It took me days to decide which cookbook I wanted to use, and then another week to decide which recipe.
I’m WAY too addicted to Taste of Home, but I might also equally be addicted to Paula Deen. I went with Mrs. Paula Deen because she cooks like me.
Well, okay without all the butter… I probably don’t use as much. ANYWAY.
I finally settled on this awesome Cheese and Pesto Italian Spaghetti Bake from Paula Deen’s The Deen Family Cookbook.
We had never made it before and it really turned out good. (update: We’ve made this dozens of times and honestly, it’s one of those dishes you can add vegetables too, flavors, seasonings, different proteins, etc. to make it what you want, which I LOVE!)
I think that next time I will probably nix the goat cheese (only because it was expensive) and add some low fat cottage cheese, simply to add a little more moisture to the recipe. (we’ve done this too now and it’s DELICIOUS!)
But honestly the flavor was amazing as it’s written below and it is definitely hearty and rich.
Printable Recipe
Cheese and Pesto Italian Spaghetti Bake
Ingredients
- 1 pounds spaghetti noodles uncooked
- 1 pounds ricotta cheese
- 12 ounces pesto
- 2 ½ cups mozzarella shredded
- 1 cup Parmesan cheese grated
- 1 cup goat cheese crumbled
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Grease a 13×9 dish.
- Cook the spaghetti for 2 minutes less than the pkg directions say to cook it. Drain the spaghetti well and transfer it to a bowl. Stir in the ricotta, pesto, 1 cup of the mozzarella, 1/2 cu. of the Parmesan and the goat cheese.
- Toss the mixture well and transfer it to the baking dish.
- Sprinkle it with the remaining mozzarella and Parmesan.
- Bake until the cheese is melted, about 15-20 minutes. Turn the oven to broil and broil for 1 minute or until golden (we skipped the broil setting.)
- Serve hot!
Looks like a great comfort casserole. My kids flip for pasta meals.
Definitely great comfort food, but also really flavorful and almost elegant enough to serve at a dinner party. Most people rave about it if they like pesto, and the good news is, my kids all loved it, so even picky eaters will like it. 😉
Mmm. Great use for that garden fresh pesto I have stowed away in the freezer. A little bit of summer in January!
lo, I wish I had garden fresh pesto, I am working on a little herb garden at the moment, so who knows what will come of that, but I can’t imagine how much more delicious this would be with fresh pesto. Yes, please. Enjoy!
Where’s the yum button? You always have something fabulous.
I love that you visit me so much Debra! Love you to death and I wish I could provide you with a “Yum” button. haha WAY better than a like button.
That looks so good Nicole. I’ve never had pesto and I think this would be a good trial dish.
Happy face, makes my day to see you. I hope all is well in your world, I miss you. I’m glad you followed me over to my new account 😉 I cannot believe you’ve never had pesto – you are seriously missing out! 🙂 Delicious flavor!
Looks yummy! Soon enough I will be back on track to link up with some of the weekly themes. They seem so fun!
PS…where on earth is your stumble button on your post, girl??? I want to stumble when I am here reading!!!! 🙂
Hey Karen, thakn you so much for the comments and I do hope you plan to join in at some point!
The stumble upon button should be in two places – it should be at the top of each post just before the content starts (I think below the title) and then on the left side of the post as you scroll down it will appear in a bar with other buttons on the side. I wonder if it didn’t load? Thanks for letting me know, I’ll check it out.
Yum! This looks like a great choice! I had the same problem too when I was trying to pick a favorite cookbook for this week haha
So glad I wasn’t alone – I am such a fan of cookbooks and while I use them occasionally I don’t use them often enough but then deciding which to use…
Interesting challenge. haha I cannot WAIT for next week’s theme 😉
This dish looks amazing! Do you mind if I feature you in my new series 100 recipes from 100 blogs? You can read more about it here: http://www.theforeigndomestic.com/2012/01/from-your-kitchen-to-mine-100-recipes.html
I featured your recipe today! It was sooo good! Thanks for sharing!
http://www.theforeigndomestic.com/2012/02/from-your-kitchen-to-mine-recipes-26-30.html
How many and what size Pesto jars to use?…
Thanks