3 pounds ground venison
2 9-oz packages of refrigerated cheese tortellini
4T olive oil
2 onions, chopped
4 cloves garlic (minced)
4 10oz cans of diced tomatoes and green chilies
2t basil
2t oregano
2t garlic powder
salt and pepper
1 pound fresh mozzarella
2 cup shredded parmesan cheese
- Cook the cheese tortellini according to package instructions and drain.
- Preheat the oven to 350-degrees (F)
- In a large frying pan, add olive oil and saute onion and minced garlic. Remove from pan.
- Brown the venison until it's cooked. Stir in the tomatoes, basil, oregano, garlic powder, salt and pepper. Add the cooked onion and garlic.
- Transfer the meat mix to a large oven-proof casserole pan.
- Add the cooked tortellini and mix well. Add the fresh mozzarella and mix.
- Sprinkle the Parmesan cheese over the top.
- Cover loosely with foil and bake for 20-25 minutes.
- Remove the foil and continue cooking until heated completely.
The original recipe can be found HERE. You may notice that we doubled the recipe, as we do have seven people to feed. It also calls for spinach, which we missed while out shopping, and Romano cheese, which our store didn't have, so we just doubled the Parmesan. It turned out pretty good actually. The chiles from the Ro-Tel did give it more of a bite than I cared for, and turned a couple of the kids away from dinner, but some extra Parmesan on top (yes, more Parm) did help cut the heat. I'm sure sour cream would have been another good option, but we didn't have any on hand. That said, when doubling the recipe we ended up with two casserole pans of dinner - of which we finished about 1-1/2 pans with a half pan left over for lunch tomorrow.