Fake Mac n Cheese

I had the night off from my other job yesterday and even though I was tired and wanted to take the evening to relax, I also wanted to cook something new. Cooking new things make me happy. I learn something new and there's always an excitement of sorts to see how the recipe will come out. I think that it's important to still push myself to do these kind of things despite my exhaustion because all work and no play makes me a dull girl - and a grumpy one.

When I polled Facebook for recipe suggestions, I got some great ideas. I wanted to make them all, but one in particular stood out for me, simply because it had only 4 ingredients. Easy! Not to mention less to pick up from the store.

The lucky winner came from Ms. Domezio and it was Baked Tortellini, which I am going to call Fake Mac n Cheese. There's nothing fake in it, but it was super easy and reminded me of homemade Mac n Cheese, so I am going with that. The directions from the link above is for some fancy TurboChef oven where it cooks stuff faster, so my cooking directions have been modified for a regular oven. 

Ingredients:

• 20 oz of Cheese Tortellini
• 15 oz Alfredo Sauce (My jar was like 16.8 oz - I used the whole jar.)
• 8 oz Mozzarella Cheese, shredded
• Prosciutto (I don't trust this kind of meat so I used about a cup of Rotisserie Chicken because I am lazy.)

Directions:

• Preheat oven to 350.
• Prepare Tortellini according to the instructions on the package.
• Prep meat to put into dish.
• Pour 1/4 cup of Alfredo sauce in the bottom of your dish to coat the bottom. (I used an 8 x 8 Pyrex, the original recipe says to use a 1" deep ceramic or Pyrex dish.)
• Drain pasta and return to pot (removed from heat). 
• Pour remainder of Alfredo sauce over the pasta. 
• Add the meat of your choice. 
• Stir it all together. 
• Pour into baking dish.
• Top with 8oz of Mozzarella making sure Tortellini is fully covered with Cheese.
• Bake, uncovered, for 20 minutes; or until cheese is golden to your liking. 

Review:
This dish was AWESOME! Pair it with a green veggie of some sort, or a salad, and garlic bread and you have a gourmet meal that was fast, easy and fairly cheap! The only thing I will change next time is I might layer the cheese. I think the cheese is what made this dish so good and there were bites of pasta without the cheese so next time, I might layer the cheese, possibly even use more.