Baked Ziti
Three layers of tubes, ricotta loosened with cream so it stays soft instead of going chalky, and fresh mozzarella dotted through the tray rather than shredded over the top. Ninety minutes, most of which is a sauce that looks after itself.
Method
Start the sauce. Heat the olive oil in a large, heavy-bottomed pot over medium. Add the onion and garlic, season with salt and pepper, and cook, stirring occasionally, until the onion is completely soft and translucent without taking on any color at all, 8 to 10 minutes.
Add the tomato paste and keep stirring until it darkens to brick red and tints the oil and onions a fiery orange, about 2 minutes. Crush the whole tomatoes by hand and add them with their juice, along with the purée, scraping the bottom of the pot as you stir. Season with salt and pepper, add the red pepper flakes if you want the heat, and bring it to a simmer. Cook, stirring occasionally, until the sauce has thickened and come together, 20 to 30 minutes.
Make the filling while that goes. Combine the ricotta, heavy cream and ½ cup Parmesan in a medium bowl, season with salt and pepper, and set it aside.
Heat the oven to 425°F and bring a large pot of salted water to a boil.
Cook the pasta until it is well short of al dente — two minutes less than you would normally give it. It finishes cooking in the oven, and pasta that was properly al dente in the pot comes out of the oven soft. Reserve 1 cup of the pasta water, then drain the pasta, rinse it under cool water, and set it aside while the sauce finishes.
Stir the reserved pasta water into the finished sauce. Tip the pasta into a large bowl, add 2 cups of the sauce, and stir to coat, working the sauce down inside the tubes rather than just around them.
Spoon a little of the remaining sauce over the bottom of a 3-quart baking dish and top with a third of the pasta. Spoon over a third of the remaining sauce, dollop with half the ricotta mixture, and scatter a third of the mozzarella. Repeat the whole sequence once, starting again with pasta. For the last layer, add the final third of the pasta and the last of the sauce, dot the remaining mozzarella over the top, and shave more Parmesan over that.
Set the dish on a parchment-lined sheet pan to catch the drips and bake until the edges are golden and bubbling and the top has browned, 30 to 40 minutes. Let it settle for a few minutes before you cut into it — straight out of the oven it slumps on the plate. A big leafy green salad is the right thing beside it.
Notes from the line
Rinsing pasta is usually a mistake, because it strips the surface starch that helps sauce cling. Here it is correct: you are stopping the carryover cooking dead so the tubes still have somewhere to go during forty minutes at 425°F. The cup of reserved pasta water puts that starch back where you want it, in the sauce, which is why the recipe asks for it.
Use fresh mozzarella cut into pieces, not shredded low-moisture from a bag. It weeps a little as it bakes and that is the point — it is what keeps the top from drying into a crust. Bagged shredded cheese is coated in anti-caking starch and behaves like a different ingredient.
Adapted from NYT Cooking. Headnote and method rewritten for Dad Made.