Ricotta Cheese Stuffed Pasta
November 30th, 2013 in Main Dishes, No-meat, Pasta by Julia Volhina
Total cooking time: 1h 10min
This is my first take on stuffed jumbo pasta shells, but I will must say it will not not be last: there are so many stuffings these may work nicely with.
In this recipe pasta is stuffed with five cheeses (ricotta, parmesan, provolone, mozzarella and romano), fresh parsley and egg mix.
For sauce I tried something new too: that is canned crushed tomatoes, usually I avoid using canned vegetables, but these worked well for sauce and saved me quite some time too.
Ingredients:
- 30-35 jumbo pasta shells
Stuffing
20oz of ricotta cheese- 2 cups of italian blend shredded cheese (romano, provolone, mozzarella, parmesan)
- 2 eggs
- Bunch of fresh parsley
- Zest of one lemon
- Salt to taste
Sauce
28oz can of crushed tomatoes- 1 teaspoon of crushed red chili pepper flakes
- 4 garlic cloves
- 2-3 tablespoon of olive oil
- Salt to taste
How to prepare, step-by-step:
- Prepare ingredients:
- Wash lemon thoroughly (many stores put something on top of their fruits and vegetables to prevent them from spoiling, so you want to remove all of them). Grate zest of all of lemon, set zest aside, you will not need the lemon itself:
- Peel and chop garlic, set it aside:
- Bring a pot of water to boil, salt to taste, add jumbo pasta shells in and cook according to package instructions until “al dente”:
- While pasta is cooking, let’s prepare sauce. For that warm up saucepan with 2-3 tablespoons of olive oil, don’t over heat. Add chopped garlic:
- And red chili pepper flakes:
- Cook until fragrant (you don’t want garlics to brown) then add crushed tomatoes, bring to light simmer and cook for a minute or two, add salt to taste (if needed), then turn heat off, sauce is ready:
- When pasta is “al dente”, drain liquid from it, rinse pasta with cold water and set it aside to cool down:
- Now it is time to prepare stuffing. Move ricotta cheese to a mixing bowl:
- Add 3/4 of lemon zest, mix:
- Beat eggs lightly and mix them with ricotta:
- Add chopped parsley, mix:
- And shredded cheeses:
- Add salt to taste and mix everything well:
- Warm oven up to 350F. Sprinkle remaining of lemon zest on bottom of a baking pan:
- Spread 1/3 of all sauce on the bottom of baking pan, event it out:
- Working in batches, stuff each jumbo pasta shell with prepared stuffing:
- And arrange them in the baking pan:
- Pour remaining sauce on top, even sauce layer out:
- Cover baking pan with a layer of foil and put to warmed up oven (350F). Bake for 30 mins covered, then remove foil and bake for 15 mins more:
- Remove pan from the oven and serve:
Looks yummy !! Do you think you can use marinara sauce instead of crushed tomatos ..?..
I guess, let me know how it goes if you try!