As I've mentioned before, Italians are pretty frugal. If at all possible, nothing goes to waste. Well, I recently found myself with some fresh ricotta in the fridge, left over from a recent trip to an Italian market. I'd already used some of it to bake an orange ricotta cheesecake but still had a little bit left.
After looking over my shelves of cookbooks, I decided to pull out one that the hubby had brought home for me quite awhile back and see what I could find. The cookbook is called La Cucina di Andrea's. It has recipes from a well-known Northern Italian restaurant in New Orleans. I pretty quickly found a pasta dish that happened to use the same amount of ricotta that I had left, so.....that would be dinner. The recipe actually used penne, but rigatoni was in my cupboard so that's what I used. A little side note.....apparently this dish was named after the famous Italian conductor Arturo Toscanini. This is some rich, delicious tasting pasta, whoever it's named after.
