Happy Easter Monday everybody! I happen to have this day off (no, I don't work for the government, I work this Saturday so this is my "weekend" technically) and have been pretty productive today. My floors are all clean, furniture is dusted, and bathrooms are sparkling. I'm on my second load of laundry and started on my last bit of studying. My mind started to wander (naturally) and of course the thing I decided I wanted to do most right now was blog! So lucky you! Today I'm going to be sharing one of my original recipes. It was adapted from a recipe that my friend shared with me ages ago that I changed around and added a bunch of stuff too. I've started to make it a habit to write things down as I make stuff up because when something turns out great I want to share it exactly as I made it. Keep in mind that I'm a home cook with absolutely no training but a good imagination. So here goes...
Hot Italian Stuffed Shells
Ingredients:
Olive oil
2 Italian sausages, casings removed and crumbled (I used hot but you can use mild or whatever you feel like)
Box large pasta shells (I used exactly 27 of them in this recipe)
2 1/2ish cups tomato sauce, divided (I used my own homemade sauce, so go ahead and use whatever you want)
2 teaspoons minced garlic
1 tomato, diced
1 cup fresh spinach, chopped
4-6 fresh basil leaves
2-3 oz goat cheese (I used half of a 130 gram package)
White wine (just a splash)
1 cup Parmesan cheese, divided
1 cup Mozzarella cheese
Salt and pepper to taste
Start by pre-heating your oven to 350 degrees and getting a large pot of salted water boiling. Once the water is boiling, add your pasta shells and cook just enough so that they are pliable but not all the way cooked through. This won't take very long. Drain the pasta shells and set aside. Next, heat some olive oil in a pan on medium-high heat. Add the garlic to the pan and saute for 1 minute. Then add the Italian sausage and saute until almost cooked through, not more than 5 minutes. Add some of the tomato sauce, chopped spinach, chopped basil, goat cheese, white wine and half of the Parmesan cheese. Add salt and pepper to taste. Cook until cheese has melted and mixture is heated through.
You don't want this mixture to be too watery as this will be going inside the shells and you want it to stay there, so you can add less tomato sauce to start and then add more if you feel it's necessary. The amount of tomato sauce was the one thing I didn't write down as I just added as much as I thought it needed and didn't think about being specific. Once the mixture is heated through, spray a 9x13 inch (approximately) baking dish with cooking spray, spread the a good amount of tomato sauce on the bottom of the dish and start to fill your pasta shells. Remember that the pasta shells aren't totally cooked through at this point and you'll need enough sauce to essentially cook the pasta shells all the way through, I would say add anywhere from 1/2 cup to 1 cup of tomato sauce on the bottom of the dish. Place them in the baking dish and keep going until you don't have any filling and/or pasta shells left.
Cover this sucker with the rest of the Parmesan and the Mozzarella and bake for 20-25 minutes or until cheese is melted.
And there you have it. You can serve this with a nice salad and some crusty garlic bread on the side.
Stay tuned next week for the next update of Food Talk at Five.
xoxo
Ash
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