The air fryer pasta timbale is a recipe for making a ziti casserole with gratinated eggplants. The recipe is very simple and includes fried eggplant slices and long pasta dressed with tomato, cheese, and basil. You’ll just need a bit of patience to arrange the eggplant slices in the bundt pan, arrange the pasta, and then close it like a treasure chest. Like the baked pasta in air fryer, this recipe also has halved cooking times and doesn’t require preheating the oven. With significant energy savings.
I find it very useful to use this appliance and I’ve made many air fryer recipes, some taken from my book Air Fryer (ed. Gribaudo). I hope you like them and find them useful.
- Difficulty: Easy
- Cost: Inexpensive
- Rest time: 10 Minutes
- Preparation time: 20 Minutes
- Portions: 4
- Cooking methods: Air Frying
- Cuisine: Italian
- Seasonality: Spring, Summer, and Fall
- Energy 837.14 (Kcal)
- Carbohydrates 55.35 (g) of which sugars 30.64 (g)
- Proteins 18.25 (g)
- Fat 58.50 (g) of which saturated 3.05 (g)of which unsaturated 0.99 (g)
- Fibers 17.52 (g)
- Sodium 5,986.58 (mg)
Indicative values for a portion of 150 g processed in an automated way starting from the nutritional information available on the CREA* and FoodData Central** databases. It is not food and / or nutritional advice.
* CREATES Food and Nutrition Research Center: https://www.crea.gov.it/alimenti-e-nutrizione https://www.alimentinutrizione.it ** U.S. Department of Agriculture, Agricultural Research Service. FoodData Central, 2019. https://fdc.nal.usda.gov
Ingredients for making pasta casserole in the air fryer
- 10.6 oz ziti
- 1 1/4 cups tomato sauce
- 1 black oval eggplant (About 14 oz)
- 1 tbsp salted ricotta
- 1 tbsp Grana Padano cheese, grated
- 1 bunch basil
- salt
- extra virgin olive oil
What you need
- 1 Air Fryer
- 1 Bundt Pan 7.5 inches in diameter
- 1 Pot
Steps
Wash and trim the eggplant, slice it thinly and evenly lengthwise. Brush the eggplant slices with oil on both sides and place them in the air fryer basket. Cook the eggplants at 375°F for 15 minutes, turning them halfway through.
While the eggplants cook in the air fryer, bring salted water to a boil and drop in the ziti. Cook the pasta for half of its cooking time, drain them, and cool them under running water.Put the ziti back in the pot where you cooked them and dress them with tomato sauce, cheese, salted ricotta, and hand-torn basil leaves. Gently mix the ziti with the tomato so as not to break them.
Brush the bundt pan with a little oil, take the eggplant slices and adhere them to the sides of the pan. Place the tomato ziti inside, aligning them lengthwise with the pan. Recover the leftover sauce at the bottom of the pot and distribute it over the pasta.
Place the pasta timbale dish in the air fryer and start cooking for 10 minutes at 356°F. Then, increase the temperature to 392°F and continue cooking for another 3 minutes.
At the end of cooking, let it rest in the turned-off air fryer for 10 minutes. This will make it easier to unmold the timbale onto a plate and keep it intact when you cut it into slices.
Additional Tips for Air Fryer Pasta Casserole
For an extra touch of flavor, place slices of smoked scamorza cheese in the middle of the pasta.
Once you flip the ziti timbale, decorate with basil leaves and curls of salted ricotta.
