Pasta/pizza Pie or Pastizza

Pizza is basically a baked flour crust topped with sauce and mozzarella that goes great with many types of additions. This creation substitutes the crust with pasta. OK OK I know it's NOT pizza but it IS tasty.

raid your pantry and refrigerator fro the ingredients you want to use.
a box of pasta
 a small jar of sauce
ground meat ( I'm using some meatloaf mix that needed 2 be used up)
I got the packages of pepperoni and salami at the dollar store.. it's not the best but it's pretty good
mozzarella cheese, I'm using sliced from a local sandwich shop but you can use preshredded or even REAL mozzarella

 not pictured
Italian seasoning

 the sharp eyed among you may notice there's a different pasta in the dish than pictured, I had a rare but not unusual problem when I poured the pasta in the water.. MEALY BUGS ! !  EEEWWW... so I had to use elbows instead

I was taught by an old Italian woman to use LOTS of water when making pasta, it's kind of amazing how people will try to cook a pound of pasta in a quart of water. I use a 10qt pot about 3/4 full with lots of salt, garlic powder and Italian seasoning. Bring the water to a hard boil, pour in your pasta of choice and cook until it's as tender as you want and then drain

in a skillet or frying pan, brown your ground meat and remove any excess grease, while the ground meat is cooking chop up the pepperoni and salami, after removing excess grease add all 3 meats back to the pan and cook until all are heated through then add your sauce and any extra seasoning. Allow to simmer on low until the pasta is done

after draining the pasta, pour it an ovenproof casserole dish and add your cut up mozzarella cheese mix to let the cheese begin to melt and then add in the meat sauce and mix well. To make it pretty add some more cheese to the top and bake in a 350 oven fer approximately 20 minutes or until the cheese on top starts to melt, then run it under the broiler to add a nice golden brown crust

You can serve this with a salad on the side and garlic bread with perhaps some fermented grape beverage or just dish it out.

 a little cream cheese added to the cooking sauce will make it a little smoother and slightly thicker
 pepper flakes added to the sauce will add some spice
 Change the meats to what you or your family enjoy, some people like mushrooms or anchovies even artichoke hearts on their pizza... go for it

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