Baked Ziti, and Too Much Cooking Wine

When we moved in a few weeks ago, Jon and I bought some basic kitchen ingredients to stock up - vinegar, soy sauce, the usual.  Somehow in our frenzy of moving in, buying kitchen stuff, and buying apartment necessities like sheets and trash bags, we convinced ourselves that a 5L glass jug of wine was a 'basic kitchen ingredient.'

The idea, of course, was that we would cook with the wine. Wine in Thailand is not very good and comparatively very expensive, so it's not like we could just buy a bottle to cook with and drink at the same time - no way its worth it to pour any wine in what you're cooking when you've splurged on a bottle to drink.

So the theory made sense, especially since we figured we would be cooking with wine all the time in the rice cooker ... pasta, stews, etc.  Three weeks later, we've only used it about three times, so maybe it wasn't the best investment.  We tried to drink some the first night - you get desperate for wine in Thailand and even stoop to drinking the cooking wine - but it was not worth it.

So, then, a question for the readers - any ideas of what, besides pasta and the rare pot roast - red wine is good in?

Nice, steaming pot of pasta

But whether or not you have wine, you can make the pasta I made in the rice cooker. It turned out a lot like baked ziti. No melty, crispy cheese on top - cheese is another rare/expensive commodity here - but we did have a little Parmesan to throw on the finished product.

Baked Ziti (in a rice cooker)
makes 3-4 servings

8 oz uncooked pasta (any shape, preferably thicker so it will hold up to the baking - we used ziti)
2 C liquid (we used 1C water and 1C wine, you could use any combination of water, wine, broth, etc)
1 small can tomato paste
6-8 plum tomatoes
2 Tbsp dried oregano
3 cloves garlic, minced
1/2 an onion, diced
1 tsp black pepper
1/2 tsp cinnamon (trust me)
sausage or ground meat (optional)
salt to taste
shredded Parmesan cheese (optional)

1. Throw everything in the rice cooker.

2. Turn the rice cooker on. Depending on the rice cooker, it will turn off when the pasta is done, or you might have to check it once in awhile. Our (very no-frills) rice cooker, which just has an on/off switch, timed it perfectly.
 3. Sprinkle cheese on top and serve.

Finished product