Thursday, August 23, 2007

Stuffed shells, yum

Remember my experiment making Miss Maggie's ricotta cheese for stuffed pasta shells? Well, this week I had to do a double Miss Maggie in the same recipe: ricotta cheese (curds and whey) for the stuffing, and Quick Cheap and Easy Seasoned Tomato Sauce to go on top, because I was also out of pasta sauce but had two cans of tomato paste and everything else in the sauce recipe.

And it all turned out just fine--I think stuffed shells are even tastier sometimes than lasagna. If I'd had some parsley (still out of that), it would have tasted even better mixed with the ricotta cheese; what I did add (to one batch of cheese) was some salt, Parmesan cheese, and a beaten egg; also a bit of store cottage cheese because I had gotten the ricotta a bit dry and I thought it needed a bit of moistening. I cooked the shells (20 shells served us along with a salad) until they were flexible but not mushy, stuffed them, and put them on top of a layer of sauce, in a greased casserole. I covered them with some shredded cheese (sharp, uncoloured Cheddar, but Mozzarella would have been fine if we'd had some) and most of the rest of the sauce recipe--it made a bit more sauce than I wanted for the pasta so I just kept the rest.

And I baked the whole thing with the lid on for about half an hour. I sprinkled a bit of Parmesan on when it came out of the oven.

Thank you, Miss Maggie--couldn't have done it without you!

1 comment:

Sadie said...

Ricotta cheese is expensive, I might just have to try out this recipe for making it from scratch. It sounds like it was good. Thanks for the idea!