In My Mother's Kitchen: Three Cheese Rolls
We didn't have people over for dinner terribly often when I was growing up, but when we did it was almost always someone connected to our synagogue. Typically such meals were either specifically tied to Passover, or more rarely another Jewish holiday. For those, my parents would sometimes invite singletons who had just arrived in town, like Jewish airmen from the Grand Forks Air Base. In addition, my parents would take their regular turn hosting the student rabbi for dinner. For these sorts of meals, the most common dish served was three cheese rolls.
Weirdly for something that was my mother's go to dish for company, I do not have the recipe. It was essentially a cheese filling rolled up in large pasta, not dissimilar from a lasagana. My recollection is that it had ricotta and parmesan, but I honestly don't know what the third cheese was. I've never made, and I can't tell you when last I had it. I do have another pasta recipe from my mother that I believe was comparatively similar, and less hassle to make. That one is called 3 Cheese Baked Ziti.
Three Cheese Baked Ziti
15 oz ricotta cheese
2 eggs
1/4 cup Parmesan
16 oz ziti
28 oz tomato sauce
8oz package grated mozzarella
1. Preheat oven to 350.
2. Cook pasta and drain.
3. Combine ricotta, eggs and Parmesan in one bowl. Mix well.
4. Combine cooked ziti and tomato sauce in a second bowl. Mix well.
5. Take a 13" by 9" pan. Pour in half the pasta/sauce mixture. Top with ricotta/egg/Parmesan mixture. Pour remaining pasta/sauce mixture on top. Sprinkle with mozzarella.
6. Bake 30 minutes.
Three cheese rolls was prettier, because you could serve each piece of stuffed pasta individually. I think it tasted similar, but honestly it's been more than 20 years so who can say.
Most of our fellow congregants did not keep kosher, but a few did, so it was smarter to play it safer with a strict dairy meal instead of mixing meat and dairy. Three cheese rolls also worked for the very few people who were vegetarian at this time. I don't recall meeting anyone who kept a vegan diet until I was in college, so that wasn't really a consideration in 1980s and 1990s North Dakota.
Whether it was for Seder or just for dinner, some of our most frequent dinner guests were Mark & Barbara Siegel. Their children were the only other kids from our synagogue to make the trek down to Fargo every Sunday for religious School, and over the course of many conversations they and my parents became very good friends. They served together on the board of the synagogue (Mark was president several times, my father was treasurer for thirty years because "if you're treasurer they can't make you be president", my mother ran the sisterhood, Barbara was involved with Hadassah). If a particularly bad blizzard struck during the winter and father deemed it unsafe to drive home, he'd crash a sofa at Mark & Barb's house in town. They had countless meals together, with my father and Mark each going to great lengths to keep the other from picking up the check. That game was endless fun for the two of them. If you went anywhere in America and needed a restaurant recommendation in the days before Yelp, Mark & Barbara could probably hook you up.
Barb passed away from brain cancer back in 2004. Mark retired and stayed in Grand Forks in the summer. His visited his kids in Denver and Boston and avoided the North Dakota winters by snowbirding to Palm Springs. There he entertained a host of family and friends throughout the winter, including my parents, who went for a week every year. M and my sister and I came along in 2018. Every meal with Mark involved great food. Before his retirement he occasionally had reasons to travel to Cleveland for work, and we ate very well both times.
Mark was, as my father said, "more family than family". When M and I told my parents about our zoom wedding practically the first thing they said was "Mark's invited, right?" He was, of course. That was the last time I "saw" him, as he passed away from complications of colon cancer on October 10. May his memory be a blessing.
ADDENDUM 10/22
My sister had the recipe on an index card, in our mother's own handwriting no less. You'll note that the ingredients, and presumably the taste, are nearly the same as the Three Cheese Baked Ziti above. However, the process is somewhat more complicated in order to create the prettier presentation. I'll probably stick with the casserole, but for history here is tigerlily_blue's transcription of the recipe. Ok, so it's really my edit of the transcription.
Three Cheese Rolls
Ingredients:
6 lasagna noodles - cooked and cut in half (for 12 noodle pieces)
1 15-16 oz container ricotta
1 egg
1 cup shredded mozzarella
1/4 cup Parmesan cheese
1/4 tsp oregano
2 cups tomato sauce
1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
2. Cook the lasagna per package instructions. After they cool, cut them in half.
3. Mix the ricotta, egg, mozzarella, Parmesan and oregano in a bowl.
4. Spread 1 cup of tomato sauce in 9x13 pan.
5. Place scant 1/4 cup of mixture on each noodle and roll up. Place each pasta roll in pan on top of sauce.
6. Spread another cup of tomato sauce on top of pasta rolls.
7. Bake at 350 for 45 minutes or until centers are hot and bubbly.
Weirdly for something that was my mother's go to dish for company, I do not have the recipe. It was essentially a cheese filling rolled up in large pasta, not dissimilar from a lasagana. My recollection is that it had ricotta and parmesan, but I honestly don't know what the third cheese was. I've never made, and I can't tell you when last I had it. I do have another pasta recipe from my mother that I believe was comparatively similar, and less hassle to make. That one is called 3 Cheese Baked Ziti.
Three Cheese Baked Ziti
15 oz ricotta cheese
2 eggs
1/4 cup Parmesan
16 oz ziti
28 oz tomato sauce
8oz package grated mozzarella
1. Preheat oven to 350.
2. Cook pasta and drain.
3. Combine ricotta, eggs and Parmesan in one bowl. Mix well.
4. Combine cooked ziti and tomato sauce in a second bowl. Mix well.
5. Take a 13" by 9" pan. Pour in half the pasta/sauce mixture. Top with ricotta/egg/Parmesan mixture. Pour remaining pasta/sauce mixture on top. Sprinkle with mozzarella.
6. Bake 30 minutes.
Three cheese rolls was prettier, because you could serve each piece of stuffed pasta individually. I think it tasted similar, but honestly it's been more than 20 years so who can say.
Most of our fellow congregants did not keep kosher, but a few did, so it was smarter to play it safer with a strict dairy meal instead of mixing meat and dairy. Three cheese rolls also worked for the very few people who were vegetarian at this time. I don't recall meeting anyone who kept a vegan diet until I was in college, so that wasn't really a consideration in 1980s and 1990s North Dakota.
Whether it was for Seder or just for dinner, some of our most frequent dinner guests were Mark & Barbara Siegel. Their children were the only other kids from our synagogue to make the trek down to Fargo every Sunday for religious School, and over the course of many conversations they and my parents became very good friends. They served together on the board of the synagogue (Mark was president several times, my father was treasurer for thirty years because "if you're treasurer they can't make you be president", my mother ran the sisterhood, Barbara was involved with Hadassah). If a particularly bad blizzard struck during the winter and father deemed it unsafe to drive home, he'd crash a sofa at Mark & Barb's house in town. They had countless meals together, with my father and Mark each going to great lengths to keep the other from picking up the check. That game was endless fun for the two of them. If you went anywhere in America and needed a restaurant recommendation in the days before Yelp, Mark & Barbara could probably hook you up.
Barb passed away from brain cancer back in 2004. Mark retired and stayed in Grand Forks in the summer. His visited his kids in Denver and Boston and avoided the North Dakota winters by snowbirding to Palm Springs. There he entertained a host of family and friends throughout the winter, including my parents, who went for a week every year. M and my sister and I came along in 2018. Every meal with Mark involved great food. Before his retirement he occasionally had reasons to travel to Cleveland for work, and we ate very well both times.
Mark was, as my father said, "more family than family". When M and I told my parents about our zoom wedding practically the first thing they said was "Mark's invited, right?" He was, of course. That was the last time I "saw" him, as he passed away from complications of colon cancer on October 10. May his memory be a blessing.
ADDENDUM 10/22
My sister had the recipe on an index card, in our mother's own handwriting no less. You'll note that the ingredients, and presumably the taste, are nearly the same as the Three Cheese Baked Ziti above. However, the process is somewhat more complicated in order to create the prettier presentation. I'll probably stick with the casserole, but for history here is tigerlily_blue's transcription of the recipe. Ok, so it's really my edit of the transcription.
Three Cheese Rolls
Ingredients:
6 lasagna noodles - cooked and cut in half (for 12 noodle pieces)
1 15-16 oz container ricotta
1 egg
1 cup shredded mozzarella
1/4 cup Parmesan cheese
1/4 tsp oregano
2 cups tomato sauce
1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
2. Cook the lasagna per package instructions. After they cool, cut them in half.
3. Mix the ricotta, egg, mozzarella, Parmesan and oregano in a bowl.
4. Spread 1 cup of tomato sauce in 9x13 pan.
5. Place scant 1/4 cup of mixture on each noodle and roll up. Place each pasta roll in pan on top of sauce.
6. Spread another cup of tomato sauce on top of pasta rolls.
7. Bake at 350 for 45 minutes or until centers are hot and bubbly.