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Stuffed Pasta Shells (photos - long post)
Posted on 5/14/20 at 10:25 am
Posted on 5/14/20 at 10:25 am
Stuffed Pasta Shells
I love pasta and this meets all my requirements for a nice pasta dish. It has lots of thick pasta, a nice flavorful meat filling, lots of cheese, and two sauces. By assembling the shells, meat filling and adding the sauces below and above the filled shells, then topping with lots of cheese before cooking, the dish has a nice separation of flavors that I like. I want the dish to be dryer than lasagna, with distinctly separate flavors on the fork. This method assures that I achieve that. For me, a nice serving is three of these stuffed pasta shells, using the size shell I was able to find. Had I been able to locate the large pasta shells, I would have served two stuffed shells.
This dish is shown, served with poached Asparagus and butter toasted Pane de Casa bread.
This is a long post, but here is how I did it.
Needed:
The pasta I used:
Conchiglioni Rigati – I wanted to make the dish with the very large shells, but I hardly ever see any in the market anymore and was not able to find any. These are medium large. If using Large shells, I would use 6. I used 12 of these medium/large shells.
Needed for Marinara Sauce:
Tomatoes – 28 ounce can of whole tomatoes in sauce
Onion – 1/2 of a medium onion, cut into two pieces, cooked in sauce and removed
Oregano – 1 Tablespoon
Anchovies – 1/2 of a 2 ounce can
Olive oil – 1 Tablespoon
Salt – 1/2 teaspoon
Black Pepper – 1/4 teaspoon
Needed for Béchamel Sauce:
Butter – 2 Tablespoons
AP Flour – 2 Tablespoons
Black pepper – 1/8 teaspoon
Milk – to achieve a relatively thin sauce
Needed for meat filling:
Beef – 1/2 pound - I wanted veal and settled for sirloin
Italian Sausage – 1 link, removed from casing – I used precooked/frozen
Onion – 1 1/2 Tablespoons small diced
Green Bell Peppers - 1 1/2 Tablespoons diced
Lawry’s Garlic Salt – 1 Tablespoon
Spinach – 5-7 ounces
Green onions – 3 or 4, sliced tops and white portions
Ricotta Cheese – 7-8 ounces (half of a 15 ounce container)
Parmesan Cheese – 2-3 ounces, shredded
Egg – 1 large egg
Black Pepper – 1/4 teaspoon
Cheese topping for filled shells:
Mozzarella Cheese – 3 or 4 Tablespoons
Parmesan Cheese - 4 or 5 Tablespoons
I plated my dish, garnished with green onion slices, poached Asparagus, with butter, and butter toasted Pane de Casa bread
I love pasta and this meets all my requirements for a nice pasta dish. It has lots of thick pasta, a nice flavorful meat filling, lots of cheese, and two sauces. By assembling the shells, meat filling and adding the sauces below and above the filled shells, then topping with lots of cheese before cooking, the dish has a nice separation of flavors that I like. I want the dish to be dryer than lasagna, with distinctly separate flavors on the fork. This method assures that I achieve that. For me, a nice serving is three of these stuffed pasta shells, using the size shell I was able to find. Had I been able to locate the large pasta shells, I would have served two stuffed shells.
This dish is shown, served with poached Asparagus and butter toasted Pane de Casa bread.
This is a long post, but here is how I did it.
Needed:
The pasta I used:
Conchiglioni Rigati – I wanted to make the dish with the very large shells, but I hardly ever see any in the market anymore and was not able to find any. These are medium large. If using Large shells, I would use 6. I used 12 of these medium/large shells.
Needed for Marinara Sauce:
Tomatoes – 28 ounce can of whole tomatoes in sauce
Onion – 1/2 of a medium onion, cut into two pieces, cooked in sauce and removed
Oregano – 1 Tablespoon
Anchovies – 1/2 of a 2 ounce can
Olive oil – 1 Tablespoon
Salt – 1/2 teaspoon
Black Pepper – 1/4 teaspoon
Needed for Béchamel Sauce:
Butter – 2 Tablespoons
AP Flour – 2 Tablespoons
Black pepper – 1/8 teaspoon
Milk – to achieve a relatively thin sauce
Needed for meat filling:
Beef – 1/2 pound - I wanted veal and settled for sirloin
Italian Sausage – 1 link, removed from casing – I used precooked/frozen
Onion – 1 1/2 Tablespoons small diced
Green Bell Peppers - 1 1/2 Tablespoons diced
Lawry’s Garlic Salt – 1 Tablespoon
Spinach – 5-7 ounces
Green onions – 3 or 4, sliced tops and white portions
Ricotta Cheese – 7-8 ounces (half of a 15 ounce container)
Parmesan Cheese – 2-3 ounces, shredded
Egg – 1 large egg
Black Pepper – 1/4 teaspoon
Cheese topping for filled shells:
Mozzarella Cheese – 3 or 4 Tablespoons
Parmesan Cheese - 4 or 5 Tablespoons
I plated my dish, garnished with green onion slices, poached Asparagus, with butter, and butter toasted Pane de Casa bread
This post was edited on 5/14/20 at 11:42 am
3
Posted on 5/14/20 at 10:25 am to MeridianDog
Making the Marinara:
Add tomatoes, olive oil, onion, and oregano to a suitable pan
Canned, crushed tomatoes would be fine, as would be sauce cooked from fresh tomatoes. I like to use whole tomatoes, crushed with my hands
Break then up pretty good and add the salt and black pepper. They will break up more as the sauce cooks.
I like the flavor that anchovies add to a marinara sauce.
I added 4 anchovies to my sauce. They will break apart as the sauce cooks and add a nice level of flavor (not fishy at all) to the finished sauce
The sauce is brought to a low simmer.
And cooked with a lid for maybe 2 hours. Some will use fresh tomatoes, add more liquid, and cook their marinara for 4-6 hours. I will occasionally do my sauce in this time-consuming manner. Maybe it is better, but my pallet is not that sophisticated.
When my sauce is done,
I remove and discard the onion.
The intent is to achieve a thick sauce, with a bright flavor and a nice color.
Making the meat filling:
I would have liked ground veal in this dish, but after failing to locate any at four different markets, I settled on ground sirloin
My intent was to make 12 shells, which would produce four servings, so I only used 8 ounces of the sirloin. There are many ingredients in my stuffing, so after stuffing the 12 shells, I still had enough meat filing for another 3-4 shells. The sirloin, onion, Lawry’s garlic salt, and black pepper go into the pan.
I forgot to add the green peppers, so in they go. We chop fresh peppers and freeze them for later use. These are some of those frozen chopped green peppers. They work fine most of the time. I eventually realized the chop on these was bigger than I wanted, so I cut them up as they cooked with a pair of kitchen shears, to get smaller bits of green pepper.
I like Italian Sausage in meat sauces, and since I was unable to find veal, I decided to add some Italian Sausage to my meat filling. We use this on pizzas and keep a bag of frozen sausage bits in the freezer. I used an amount probably equivalent to a single sausage link and added it when the sirloin was cooked.
The pieces were bigger than I liked, so I broke them up with my spoon.
The cooked meats go into a mixing bowl to cool.
Spinach:
I like baby spinach, so that is what I used. I eventually added half of my small package (in two additions) to the pan.
When the spinach has yielded all the water and the color has changed to dark green, it is ready. The yield, after the sauté was about 1/4 cup.
It went into the bowl with the meat to cool
Add tomatoes, olive oil, onion, and oregano to a suitable pan
Canned, crushed tomatoes would be fine, as would be sauce cooked from fresh tomatoes. I like to use whole tomatoes, crushed with my hands
Break then up pretty good and add the salt and black pepper. They will break up more as the sauce cooks.
I like the flavor that anchovies add to a marinara sauce.
I added 4 anchovies to my sauce. They will break apart as the sauce cooks and add a nice level of flavor (not fishy at all) to the finished sauce
The sauce is brought to a low simmer.
And cooked with a lid for maybe 2 hours. Some will use fresh tomatoes, add more liquid, and cook their marinara for 4-6 hours. I will occasionally do my sauce in this time-consuming manner. Maybe it is better, but my pallet is not that sophisticated.
When my sauce is done,
I remove and discard the onion.
The intent is to achieve a thick sauce, with a bright flavor and a nice color.
Making the meat filling:
I would have liked ground veal in this dish, but after failing to locate any at four different markets, I settled on ground sirloin
My intent was to make 12 shells, which would produce four servings, so I only used 8 ounces of the sirloin. There are many ingredients in my stuffing, so after stuffing the 12 shells, I still had enough meat filing for another 3-4 shells. The sirloin, onion, Lawry’s garlic salt, and black pepper go into the pan.
I forgot to add the green peppers, so in they go. We chop fresh peppers and freeze them for later use. These are some of those frozen chopped green peppers. They work fine most of the time. I eventually realized the chop on these was bigger than I wanted, so I cut them up as they cooked with a pair of kitchen shears, to get smaller bits of green pepper.
I like Italian Sausage in meat sauces, and since I was unable to find veal, I decided to add some Italian Sausage to my meat filling. We use this on pizzas and keep a bag of frozen sausage bits in the freezer. I used an amount probably equivalent to a single sausage link and added it when the sirloin was cooked.
The pieces were bigger than I liked, so I broke them up with my spoon.
The cooked meats go into a mixing bowl to cool.
Spinach:
I like baby spinach, so that is what I used. I eventually added half of my small package (in two additions) to the pan.
When the spinach has yielded all the water and the color has changed to dark green, it is ready. The yield, after the sauté was about 1/4 cup.
It went into the bowl with the meat to cool
This post was edited on 5/14/20 at 10:38 am
Posted on 5/14/20 at 10:27 am to MeridianDog
Posted on 5/14/20 at 10:33 am to MeridianDog
Feast for the eyes! Bet it was tasty.
This post was edited on 5/14/20 at 3:10 pm
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