Pizza Spaghetti — Because After You Make Pasta From Scratch, Sometimes You Just Let the Oven Do the Rest

Summer school is out and Sofia is home all day, every day, for three months. Jessica and I have a system: on my 48-hours-off days, I have both kids. On my shift days, Elena takes them at the Maryvale house (she insists, we pay for groceries, she pretends we don't). The in-between days — when Jessica works and I'm at the station — we use a mix of neighbors, Jessica's friend Katie, and a college student named Maria who babysits for $15 an hour and who Diego has decided is his personal chauffeur.

My days with both kids are a study in controlled chaos. The itinerary: park in the morning (before the heat gets lethal), grocery shopping (which with two kids is a sport, not an errand), cooking project in the afternoon (Sofia helps, Diego supervises from his high chair perch), and outdoor time in the evening when the temperature drops below 105. It's a schedule built around heat avoidance and stomach-filling, which is basically the Phoenix summer experience for everyone.

This week's cooking project with Sofia: homemade pasta. Not Mexican, not grilled, not anything from the regular Rivera playbook. I've been wanting to learn pasta for years — the real kind, flour and egg, rolled thin, cut by hand. I bought a manual pasta machine (the hand-crank kind, attached to the counter with a clamp) and Sofia and I spent Tuesday afternoon making fettuccine.

The process: semolina flour and eggs, mixed into a dough, kneaded until smooth, rested, then rolled through the machine. Sofia cranked the handle while I fed the dough — a team effort, a production line, her face focused and serious as the dough got thinner and thinner with each pass. We cut it into fettuccine and laid the noodles on a floured towel to dry. She looked at the rows of golden pasta and said, "We made this, Daddy." We did.

I served it with a simple sauce: garlic, olive oil, cherry tomatoes from our garden (the first real harvest, twelve perfect red orbs), fresh basil, Parmesan. The pasta was imperfect — slightly uneven, a little thick in places — but it tasted like Tuesday afternoon with my daughter, and there is no sauce in the world better than that.

Diego ate plain noodles with butter. He also ate a piece of raw dough when I wasn't looking. His commitment to eating unauthorized food remains unbroken.

Tuesday’s fettuccine project set a high bar — Sofia still talks about it like we built a rocket. But a 48-hour shift doesn’t leave time for flour clouds and hand-cranked machines, and Jessica needed something fast and crowd-pleasing that Diego couldn’t eat raw off the counter. Pizza Spaghetti hits that sweet spot between “we still made real food” and “I had 25 minutes” — and it has the same two things Sofia approved of most about Tuesday’s dinner: pasta and tomato sauce.

Pizza Spaghetti

Prep Time: 15 min | Cook Time: 30 min | Total Time: 45 min | Servings: 6

Ingredients

• 12 oz spaghetti
• 1 lb Italian sausage, casings removed
• 1 medium onion, diced
• 3 cloves garlic, minced
• 1 jar (24 oz) marinara sauce
• 1 can (14.5 oz) diced tomatoes, drained
• 1 tsp Italian seasoning
• 1/2 tsp crushed red pepper flakes (optional)
• 2 cups shredded mozzarella cheese, divided
• 1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese, divided
• 1 oz sliced pepperoni
• Salt and black pepper to taste
• Fresh basil for garnish

Instructions

1. Preheat and prep. Preheat your oven to 375°F. Grease a 9x13-inch baking dish and set aside. Cook spaghetti in salted boiling water until just al dente, about 1 minute less than package directions. Drain and set aside.
2. Brown the sausage. In a large skillet over medium-high heat, cook the Italian sausage, breaking it into crumbles, until browned and cooked through, about 6–8 minutes. Add the diced onion and cook another 3 minutes until softened. Add garlic and cook 1 minute more. Drain excess fat.
3. Build the sauce. Stir the marinara sauce, drained diced tomatoes, Italian seasoning, and red pepper flakes into the sausage mixture. Season with salt and black pepper. Simmer on low for 5 minutes, stirring occasionally.
4. Combine pasta and sauce. Add the cooked spaghetti to the skillet and toss until every strand is coated. Transfer half the mixture into the prepared baking dish, spreading it into an even layer.
5. Layer the cheese. Sprinkle 1 cup of mozzarella and 1/4 cup of Parmesan evenly over the first layer. Add the remaining pasta mixture on top and press gently to settle.
6. Top and bake. Scatter the remaining mozzarella and Parmesan over the top. Arrange pepperoni slices across the surface. Bake uncovered for 25–30 minutes, until the cheese is melted, bubbly, and golden at the edges.
7. Rest and serve. Let the bake rest 5 minutes before cutting. Garnish with fresh basil and serve directly from the dish.

Nutrition (per serving)

Calories: 580 | Protein: 31g | Fat: 24g | Carbs: 58g | Fiber: 4g | Sodium: 980mg