About the music: When we were making this dish a few days ago, we realized that we haven’t recorded a special mix for one of our recipes recently. Since the dish came together so well, despite our lack of foresight when it came to making sure we had all the right tools to cook it, we thought we would commemorate it with an hour of the pure goods. It’s hard to put your finger on the genre of this mix to be honest. At Sandwich funk we’ve really been vibing a rework of a song by Ornette, called crazy. It has a smooth yet slightly dark tone to it and we thought it would be a good jumping off point for the mix. We scanned through our music libraries and came away with 16 tracks that we thought would take you for a ride. There are a few of the classics, Ratatat, Todd Terje, Aeroplane & Four Tet, along with some artists we really think you should check out, Ben Gomori, Grovesnor, Bakermat & Cameo Culture. We’re pretty damn excited with how it turned out and we hope you dance to it as much as we did…cuz it was a lot.

Download the mix here!

Serves: 4 (or 4 meatastic sessions for 1)

Prep/cook time: 1 hour

Ingredients:

1lb lean ground beef

2 cups tomato sauce, any kind you damn well please

1/2 cup half ‘n half, say that ten times fast

1/2 cup grated parmesan, or more if you have the balls

1 tsp paprika

2 cloves minced garlic

1 cup water

1 packet brown gravy mix (CURVE BALL)

2 tsp italian seasoning

1 bag penne pasta, cooked, drained, rinsed of starch

mozzarella and parmesan for baking

pinch red pepper flakes

Directions:

First you need to mentally prepare yourself for this mix. It is like an emotional and spiritual journey through baked ziti. You will literally emerge on the other side unable to see baked ziti the same way again. Just know that going into this.

Let’s get this beefy started in here. Preheat the oven to about treefiddy.

The plan is to brown the beef, so turn that burner to eleven (sorta mid/high) and with pan in-hand let the beef simmer, let it simmer with the occasional stir. Once it’s good and brown we need to add the zests and tastes. So flavor it up by adding two cups of tomato sauce, half a cup of half n’ half, two hand fulls(half cup) of grated parm, only one teaspoon of paprika–don’t get too testy now, drop in two teaspoons of crushed garlic and shuffle in a heaping spoonful (two teaspoons) of dried italian seasoning without sneezing.

Try to not be totally overtaken by the moving beats. Take that packet of gravy by the wrapper and if you need to, shake it out, shake it all out. We say – do it. ‘Cause sh!ts about to get real.

If you contain your dance moves for just one second, pour that packet into one cup of H2O, mix the mix and add it to the meat sauce. Let that mixture of goodness simmer for a hot ten minutes with the occasional stir.

Somewhere around you is a neglected pound of penne pasta. Give it the needed attention by cooking it according to label. **Remember to rinse the pasta with hot water after you drain it — this gets rid of the starch!

Place the mosh-pit of penne’s into a baking dish, most of them will lay down naturally- this is normal. Cover them in the savory beef sauce with the intention to stir the whole thing up.

After the penne and sauce are good and stirred, you need to basically coat everything with shredded cheese. The music should basically be killing it right now. So rock the f out and spread the cheese!!!

Once you’ve gotten a grip on yourself put that beautiful cheesy baking dish in the oven and let it sit for about twenty minutes or till it starts bubblin’. Grab it with oven mitts and let the thing cool off for a bit, it’s going to be hot as the dickens!

Once served add extra cheese, red pepper flakes and salt and pepper to taste! Enjoy the ziti n’ deep house!