Last week Sara Kate showed you her favorite way to use up a lot of odds and ends from the pantry and fridge: Free-form soup. Here's one more way to use up little scraps of cheese, vegetables, herbs, nuts, and even beans that you would like to sweep out of your pantry. Pasta casserole!
Pasta casserole is one of my favorite ways to use up all sorts of goodies from the fridge and pantry. I often have little jars with a teaspoon of capers or pickled vegetables, bags with scraps of cheese, and small handfuls of spinach left over the in the fridge from other meals, and a hot baked casserole is a great way to use them all up.
My method is simple. I cook a pound of pasta — ideally something small and ridged that will hold on to the cheese and other mix-ins. Then I toss it with chopped vegetables, minced onion (no need to cook the onion first, although you can if you want to), herbs, cheese, leftover nuts, capers, chopped pickled vegetables, drained canned kidney beans or chickpeas, or anything else that takes my fancy. I try to make sure there is at least 1 cup of cheese (preferably more) for a pound of pasta. If the mixture is really dry you can also stir in a couple of beaten eggs to help hold it together.
Then I spread this mix into a lightly greased 13 x 9 or 3-quart casserole dish, and bake it for about 40 minutes in a 350°F oven.
The casserole pictured above has: Fusilli pasta, chopped baby spinach, almond slices, thinly sliced baby potatoes that were blanched quickly in boiling water, and grated scraps of Parmesan and Manchego cheese. I also added some chopped slices of deli baby Swiss. I tossed the mixture with some olive oil, salt and pepper, and a dash of smoked paprika.
Surprisingly, all these different cheeses and flavors went great together! So great in fact that my dinner guests practically licked the dish clean. And it cleaned out some scraps of cheese that had been hanging around my cheese drawer for a long time, as well as almonds from the baking cupboard, spinach that was about to go bad, and a pound of pasta from the pantry. Usually I add some canned beans, too — one of my favorite pasta casseroles involves Gouda cheese, kidney beans, lots of onions, and chili powder.
So, if you are still working on clearing out your fridge and pantry, and are finding a few disparate ingredients to use up, try a pasta casserole!
Related: Recipe Review: Heidi Swanson's Mushroom Casserole
(Originally published March 10, 2010)
(Images: Faith Durand)
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I've never met a casserole I didn't like.
This is the best idea ever.
I've lived in the midwest four years now and have yet to make a hotdish. I will try this!
I've made lots of pasta casseroles, but I never thought to throw in whatever I have in the pantry. Great idea! Will try soon.
That's exactly what I did to help clear out my freezer and pantry last night! Sicilian sausage, chilli and tomato, with enough leftovers for tonight too - so I can spend time sorting out all my kitchen tools.
Oh, and I forgot - scraps of cooked chicken, leftover pot roast, shredded pork, browned ground beef - these are all great additions too! I love being able to just throw in a handful of this or that and not worry about having "enough" meat to make up a whole dish.
Ooo, I need to try this. Maybe for my bookclub (that way the cake can remain the shining centerpiece).
This is great. My base is usually fusilli, sometimes farfalle, and my preferred cheese is feta of which I grab a rather big piece from a square, then just crumble it between my fingers while sprinkling it over the salad (yes, it's usually a pasta salad) as topping. What goes in the thing except for these two standard ingredients is basically any veggies I can find as well as canned corn, olives (green or black) and sometimes carrots as well. Like Faith suggested, leftover meat is good too or if an egg is about to go bad I boil it hard, then chop it fine. Usually a good olive oil, a nice white-wine vinegar or balsamico as well as sea salt and pepper from the grinders is enough to round it nicely. Natural, fresh taste is the best.
My kind of weeknight cooking!
Ha Ha!!!! I do this often and my husband calls it a "trasherole" cause it's whatever is left.
This is such a great idea!! I love the previous comment about a "trasherole" hahaha!! I am going to have to make on of these and I just bet for the pasta, that Kamut Khorasan Wheat pasta would work great to hold onto everything. We love the taste and texture! Thanks for this fab idea :)
My previous post might make me sound like a not very bright person; forgot to add that I don't have an oven right now, so need to find other ways to use "mismatched" ingredients.
I enjoy the *virtuous* feeling that comes from creating a delicious meal by cleaning out the fridge, freezer and the pantry. I keep a couple of basics on hand in the pantry to serve as the base for "mismatched" ingredients: diced tomatoes, pasta or rice, broth (canned or frozen). In a blog post I called this thrifty cooking technique - new math: http://mamasays.us/blog/2008/10/29/its-thursday-lets-get-thrifty/
I've always been leery of doing this as I'm afraid that the different flavors wouldn't mesh. I guess I need to be more creative with my cooking. I guess if it doesn't turn out, its just one meal.
i made a free form casserole last night too - but with rice instead:
http://bit.ly/gs1odO
So the pasta doesn't go all gummy from all that cooking?
We use up leftovers on homemade pizzas... same idea, I think!
Ditto on the homemade pizza as another good way to get rid of leftovers. You can put just about anything on a good dough, with some cheese, and have it taste delicious! We'll be making a pizza this weekend to use up some leftover pickled veggies and some tomato sauce.