Maybe it’s the fact that its summer and we’re all craving tomatoes, or maybe it’s that biking 10 miles a day without collapsing requires some serious carbo-loading, or maybe its just the result of acquiring 2 new Italian cookbooks within a few weeks of one another, but as of late we seem to be spending an awful lot of time in pasta-territory. Be it drunken pasta, or old favorites, tonight was no exception.

Having tried Jamie Oliver’s baked pasta, last week (a lovely simple chez-piggy-in-a-casserole-dish sort of fare), we decided to try David Rocco’s this week. David Rocco’s baked pasta is more guy-food: tomatoes, tonnes of cheese (including smoked mozzarella or scamorza if you can find it), sun-dried tomatoes, more tomatoes, olives, crushed red peppers, and eggplant make it a hearty stick-to-your ribs sort of meal (so it’s not surprising that it would be Dan’s top choice after a day of running errands and biking):

PASTA AL FORNO

Ingredients

1 lb rigatoni pasta (450g) (we actually used whole wheat penne rigatoni — which worked pretty well)
4 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil (60ml)
2 garlic cloves, chopped
1 large eggplant, cubed
15 infornate olives, pitted and chopped (I used black semi-dried)
10 large sun-dried tomatoes, chopped
2 dried chili pepper, crushed (optional, but strongly recommended)
1 jar of tomato puree (750ml)
0.8lb freshly grated mozzarella (400g)
smoked scamorza cheese, as much as desired, roughly chopped (we couldn’t find this, so instead used 1/2 lb plain mozzarella (grated) and 1/2 lb smoked mozzarella (chopped into chunks) which worked quite well),
freshly grated parmigiano cheese for sprinkling
salt to taste

To start your Pasta al Forno:

Preheat oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit.

While the rigatoni cooks in salted boiling water, prepare the sauce. In a saucepan heat up olive oil and sautí garlic, eggplant, olives, sun-dried tomatoes and chili peppers for a few minutes. Add tomato puree and salt. Let cook for approximately 10 minutes on medium heat.

Lightly oil a large (8×12″) baking dish, set aside. Drain rigatoni, and mix with sauce in a large bowl. Add the mozzarella and smoked scamorza (or smoked mozzarella)–the cheese will start to melt as soon as you add it, so you have to be a bit quick here–mix just long enough to get the cheese well-distributed throughout the mix (30 sec. tops, otherwise all the cheese will melt and end up in one large blob on your spoon). Now pour the whole mixture into the baking dish, sprinkle with parmesean, and pop it in the oven.

Alternatively, you can do the layering thing: drain the pasta, add to the saucepan with the sauce, sprinkle with some parmigiano and cook for another 30 seconds. Place half the rigatoni in a baking dish, adding a layer of half of the mozzarella, half of the scamorza and another sprinkle of parmigiano cheese over the pasta.Add the remaining rigatoni, and follow with a final layer of all the cheeses.

Bake for 20 to 30 minutes or until golden brown.

Per 4 persone (again: 4 ravenously hunrgy young males–this is a lot of pasta).