The Giant Garlic Spaghetti Monster

aka The Spaghetti Sandwich

I've been wanting to make this for a while, and actually found a recipe for a spaghetti sandwich in this awesome kids cookbook- Cooking with Herb: The Vegetarian Dragon.  When I recently had a big craving for spaghetti and meatballs, I decided to go for it.  I made one adjustment though,  I used egg noodles instead of a longer stringier pasta like spaghetti, fettucini or angel hair.  The fluffy egg noodles took some of the 'weight' out of the dish allowing for more face stuffing! 

Quantities are vague hear, because I assume everyone has their own way of making spaghetti and meatballs.  For the record, I used a 12 oz bag of basil egg noodles, almost a full jar of Newman's Own Marinara, and one 12 oz bag of veggie meatballs.  For the garlic bread, I just followed the directions on the box but homemade garlic bread is easy to concoct if you have some bread, garlic and butter lying around.  Here's a good recipe from a fellow blogger. Oh, and we were able to eat off of this for almost a week, so, let's say serves 8-10.

Ingredients

Noodles (spaghetti or egg noodles work well)
Tomato Sauce
Pesto
Meatballs (Try a great meatless version- Nate's Zesty Italian 'balls)
Garlic Bread (Trader Joe's frozen variety was used in this experiment)
Provolone

Directions
Boil up some water for the noodles.  Heat up your tomato sauce and meatballs in another pot.

 Add a heaping spoonful or 2 of pesto to your tomato sauce.  Drain the noodles and heat up the garlic bread in the oven with provolone on top for extra cheesiness.  Mix noodles with the sauce and meat balls.   When the garlic bread is done, top a piece of garlic bread with  some saucy noodles.

Top with another piece of garlic bread.  Smash down real hard.  Try to fit it in your mouth, then give up and eat it with your hands and a fork like a normal person.  

Ravioli Pizza

The concept for this pizza was conceived and carried out within an hour.  I couldn't decide if I wanted pizza or ravioli for dinner, so this delicious creature became my ingenious solution.  I had my pie and ate it too.

You can make your very own Ravioli Pizza.  It's easy.  Just make pizza like you normally do, and add some cooked ravioli on top before you throw it in the oven.  I used a trio of spinach, porcini mushroom and roasted red pepper raviolis for this pie.

A few tips I learned from my 1st Ravioli Pizza trial run:
1.  Let the cooked ravioli sit and dry out for 10-15 minutes after you cook it.  Pat dry if need be.  I didn't and thus there was some extra wateriness in the pasta.

2.  Place some cheese on top of the raviolis so the raviolis don't burn.  I used slices of fresh mozzarella and I experimented by placing some raviolis partially under the slices and some out in the open.  The raviolis began to brown a little too quickly.  It would be easiest to use a shredded or thinly sliced cheese to cover the raviolis.

3. Don't eat the normal amount of pizza you usually do.  These slices were heavy.  I thought I could handle two.  I could not.  I had to walk around my house like Paul Newman's egg-eating ass in Cool Hand Luke.

Ingredients
Pizza stuff
Raviolis

Directions
Make pizza like you normally do, and add ravioli.  You could even use frozen pizza (just put some extra cheese on top halfway through the cooking process).

For this pie I mixed pesto and vodka sauce together for the sauce, fresh mozarella, onions, tomatoes, and a few dashes of kalamata tapenade.  Here's some pics...