Pasta bake with beans, broccoli & sausage

I had a lot of broccoli left over - from what, I don't know - and I decided to chop it up and put it into a pasta bake from the Cook Yourself Thin Cookbook.

This is kind of a high-calorie recipe compared to other recipes in the book, so I had put off making it for a while even though it sounded really good.  First, you boil a large amount of water and blanch several cloves of garlic and the chopped-up florets from a full crown of broccoli.  When they are done, you set the broccoli aside in a big bowl, then saute the garlic cloves with some Italian turkey sausage and fennel seeds.  When that is browned, you add that to the broccoli, along with some ricotta cheese, shredded mozzarella cheese, chicken stock, pepper, and a can of rinsed and drained cannellini beans.

You also cook a box of rigatoni almost to al dente, then add that to the huge bowl of happy things.  Toss into a well oiled baking dish, cover with the remaining mozzarella and some bread crumbs (which I happen to have made myself with my food processor), and bake.

The above photo is the uncooked pasta bake, which apparently you can make in advance and cover with plastic wrap.  Below are the bowls of cooked noodles and fixings:

I thought this was pretty darn good, but Dave's reaction was much stronger - he loved it enough to get two bowls (which, even though it is high calorie for the low-fat cookbook, is still pretty decent for a pasta bake).  I think it was the turkey sausage.  Lately I haven't been cooking much meat, and he really went nuts for this. The sausage was really good - bulk Italian turkey sausage from Whole Foods, of course.  And there was just enough cream sauce, but not enough that it made you feel disgusting and sad.


So, I guess I know what I'm doing the next time I get a big hunk of broccoli!