A Rigatoni Cake for Mother's Day!

Rigatoni Cake

Ingredients

bolognese sauce (found on my previous blog post or any meat sauce you prefer)

bechamel sauce (found on my previous blog post) OR 4 oz. ricotta cheese

LARGE rigatoni pasta (the largest you can find)

oil for coating pasta

1 cup parmesan cheese

1 cup mozzarella cheese

springform pan

I saw a rigatoni pie recipe on the Martha Stewart website nearly a year ago and have wanted to make it ever since.  Life got in the way and I was never able to fit this in.  I planned on making it several times for holidays (Christmas, Easter, etc.), but it never seemed to make it on the menu.  So, when the girls asked what I wanted to do for Mother's Day, I said that I just wanted to make the rigatoni pie together.

A couple of months ago, Meghann and I went to Eataly in downtown Chicago.  Eataly is a gourmet Italian grocery store/cafe that recently opened. Anyone who needs to buy ingredients for Italian food MUST go there.  There were probably 6 or 7 aisles of dried pasta alone!  I found a bag of rigatoni that I knew would be perfect for this recipe.

On the Saturday before Mother's Day, Meghann and I went to the grocery store to make sure we had everything we needed for the pie.  On  Mother's Day after lunch, I started making the sauce.  I decided to use my Bolognese Sauce from a previous blog post instead of the recipe Martha Stewart used.  I knew my sauce was delicious and I thought the combination of meats would work great for this.  I let the sauce simmer for 3 hours while I took a nice walk with my husband through the forest preserve.

Most of the recipes I have seen of rigatoni pies like this call for ricotta cheese.  I'm not a fan of ricotta cheese (GASP!), so I thought I would use a bechamel sauce in it's place.  The recipe I used can be found in a previous blog post of mine also.  

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.  Now that the sauces were made, I just needed to assemble the rigatoni pie.  Boil the noodles until they are al dente (about 10 minutes).  Drain the pasta and rinse with cold water.  Drizzle a little oil over the noodles to prevent sticking.  Add 1 cup of parmesan cheese to the noodles and toss to coat.

Now comes the fun part.  You need to stand up the rigatoni noodles on their end in a springform pan.  Make sure you pack these in tightly, but you also want to make sure to keep all the holes in the noodles open and not pressed closed.  The parmesan cheese helps hold the noodles together.

Pour the bechamel sauce over the noodles.  If you are using ricotta cheese, you would spread it over the top of the noodles.

Add the bolognese sauce one ladle at a time. After each ladle, push the meat sauce down into the holes of the rigatoni.  My sauce was still too warm to touch, so I used a chopstick to push the sauce into the holes.  But if your sauce is cooler, you could push it in with your clean fingers.  Take your time with this so you don't leave any voids.

Sprinkle a little parmesan cheese on top, place on a cookie sheet with rims in case of leaks and bake in the oven for 15 minutes.  Take the pan out of the oven and sprinkle with one cup of mozzarella cheese. Return the pan to the oven for 15 more minutes.  I did not cover the pan either time.  Remove from the oven and let cool 5 minutes.  I ran a knife around the edge of the springform pan before unmolding to make sure it wouldn't stick.  But it didn't seem necessary as there was no sticking.  Release and remove the side of the springform pan to unveil your masterpiece!!  

I wasn't sure if it would stick together without the ricotta cheese, but it did!  It really looked beautiful.  However, since we used a springform pan AND since the noodles stood pretty high, I thought this looked more like a CAKE than a PIE, so I named this the Rigatoni Cake!!

The family couldn't wait to cut into it.  And it disappeared immediately!  I served it with some garlic breadsticks and a salad.