Stuffed shells. It's one of those classics that led me, as a child,
to believe that all Italian-American entrees where just different configurations of pasta,
red sauce and ricotta cheese. I haven't had it in years and I'm so excited.
Step one is get a giant pot of sauce going. You could get away with half the quantity I'm making
right now, but it's always good to make extra and freeze it. I'm just chopping up two big
onions. Doesn't matter what kind. And then I'll peel and chop at least half a head of garlic.
Nice big pot over medium-high heat. Tons of olive oil on the bottom, and in goes the onions. I'll
just stir those pretty frequently until they soften and start to go brown, maybe 10 minutes.
In-between stirs, I can start opening 3 or 4 28 oz cans of crushed tomatoes. Each of those is
about 800g. When you need them, you're gonna need them fast, so get at least one open in advance.
Onions are browning, and this is when I usually put in my garlic. You put it in
from the start it could burn if you don't stir constantly. Then I'll put in one of
these little 6 oz cans of tomato paste, 170g, and let it fry for a sec. Ah, I knew I should
have been using a wooden spoon. The spatula just is not rigid enough to bash this stuff around.
And right when you're terrified the tomato paste is gonna burn like THAT, ahhh, in goes
the can of tomatoes you were careful to open in advance. Scrape the bottom of the pan to deglaze.
I'll put in two or three more of these big cans. And you certainly don't have to do this but it's
nice to put in a glass of wine, red or white. Grind in a bunch of pepper and whatever dried
herbs you want. I've got oregano, thyme and dried basil. Big pinch of salt to start with,
and I think I'll pour in more olive oil. I like lots of oil in my sauce.
Stir that up, and then you can just simmer this over medium-low heat while you do everything else.
Just stir it frequently, like in-between
every other task you do. You let it sit for too long, the stuff on the bottom will burn.
Next we do the cheese filling. I've got a pound and a half of ricotta cheese here. 680g.
I do think full-fat ricotta tastes better, but part skim is all they had at the store. It's fine.
We can make it smoother and meltier with a pound of mozzarella. 450g. I'm using fresh mozz but any
kind is fine. And to give it a stronger flavor, I've got 7 oz, or 200 grams of Pecorino Romano.
This is the hard grating cheese I grew up with, as opposed to parmesan. These big,
sloppy red sauce Italian-American dishes were generally originated by immigrants
from southern Italy, like the Raguseas, and pecorino is popular in the south.
Pecorino is basically parmesan but made with sheep's milk instead of cow's milk.
And when you get down to the tiny square you can't grate anymore, you could eat it,
or throw it in your sauce. It needs a stir anyway. It always needs a stir.
Take your mozzarella and grate it up as fine as you can. Some people set some of that mozzarella
aside to melt over the top at the end. I don't like to do that. I will grab some of that pecorino
and save it for dusting at the table. Before I get rid of my grater I'm gonna grate a couple
more cloves of garlic. You could chop them, but I think for the cheese filling I want the garlic
as fine as possible, and you don't need much, because this isn't gonna get cooked very much.
All this goes into a nice big mixing bowl, and you may think this seems like a lot of cheese,
but this will make the right amount of filling for a 1-pound bag of shells. You'll see.
In goes my pound and a half of ricotta. Ricotta being a cottage-cheese-type product
that is "recooked" from the whey leftover from other cheese-making.
It's relatively lean, high-protein, which makes it work as the primary bulk of this whole dish.
Speaking of protein, in goes some eggs. I'm doing four, which is maybe kind of a lot. You
don't have to use any, but it makes the filling set into something more cakey. Without the egg,
the filling is more crumbly. Tends to fall off your fork when you're trying to eat.
A huge amount of black pepper, but no salt. The pecorino is salty enough in there.
Last thing is to chop up some fresh herbs. This is parsley. I'm just pulling it off
the stems. Bits of thin stem are fine. The thick ones I try to leave behind.
Same deal with this bunch of basil. And I'll just mow through that.
A lot of people put blanched spinach in the filling. You could do that. Frozen
spinach works great for that. Just drain it thoroughly before you put it in. Again,
I'll grab some of this and reserve it for garnishing at the table. The rest
goes in the filling, and now you just get in there and smash it all up. Get a nice,
homogenous mixture. It feels almost like a dough by the time you're done with it.
There, and you can see I've got a big pot of water coming to a boil for my shells.
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Now, salt that water. Jumbo shells. Really big ones. Smaller ones are just impossible
to fill. These are from Italy, so it's a 500g package, which is a little over one pound,
and it says they cook in 15 minutes. Well, then I'm gonna boil them for maybe 12 minutes.
Yes, it'd be nice if I had a bigger pot, but I'm using my big one for the sauce. It'll be fine
as long as I stir these to make sure they don't stick to the bottom. You want to boil these until
they're pliable and you can fill them, but they should still be a little crunchy because they're
gonna cook more in the oven. Three minutes less than the package directions usually works great.
Drain them into a colander and then I would rinse them with cold water, to stop their cooking,
to rinse off the starch that would cause them to stick together,
and also to cool them down so you can handle them.
My sauce is looking nice, and it's time to finish it up. Give
it a taste. If your instinct is to stir in a little sugar,
try stirring in some more salt first. Salt really offsets bitter notes in canned tomatoes. Though
there's no shame in putting in a pinch of sugar, too. That's Clemenza's trick. How's Paulie?
And these tomatoes I had were pretty thick to begin with so I'm actually
going to to loosen this back up again with some water. You could
hit this with a stick blender too if you want it smoother. I like it chonky.
My oven is heating to 400 F, 200 C, and into a baking dish goes a good layer of tomato sauce,
enough so that once all the shells are in here,
displacing liquid, they'll be up to their shoulders in sauce.
Grab your par-boiled shells and your filling. Some people load the filling in with a spoon. I
think that's a huge pain. Some people use a piping bag, that'd work great, but I hate loading piping
bags. I honestly see no problem with just smashing this filling in with your fingers.
Then I like to position them cheese-side-up in the sauce, so the cheese can brown a little.
Here, Lauren's gonna do a few. It helps if you kinda smooth them to expand that opening.
Some people top this with some more tomato sauce and then some mozzarella. I feel like
that just turns this into a lasagna. If I'm gonna go through the work of filling individual shells,
I want to see individual shells. I don't want this all to all bake into a single mass.
Some people bake it uncovered. I like to cover it with foil and then just let
these steam cook in there for 15, 20 minutes until they're bubbly.
And hey, let's go full-on Jersey Shore and make some garlic bread with this.
The key is honestly just use a huge amount of butter. Not one, but two sticks of butter I
softened in the microwave on low power. That's half a pound, 225g. Half a head of garlic,
chopped goes in there. A whole bunch of pepper, and then enough salt to make it taste a little
too salty. It's seasoning the bread, remember. This was salted butter so I didn't need much
more salt. You could mix in herbs, too, but I prefer to sprinkle them on at the end.
That's enough garlic butter for a big baguette. Here's half of it,
cut in half and then you've gotta really slather it on. You want there to be enough
to melt down through the bread as it cooks. Put it on a tray. The butter is gonna leak.
When the shells are cooked, I'll just pull the foil off and turn on the broiler,
AKA the grill, and get a little color on the top.
If you just bake it uncovered the whole way I think it tends to come out kinda dry.
There you go. I'll throw my garlic bread under the broiler for a few minutes,
just until it s brown and crispy. Some herbs on top, chop into chunks. Nice and crispy.
Since I made extra sauce, I can kinda sauce the plate before I put on the shells.
If I have bread, I like to get some extra sauce that I can mop up.
Now, I had 25 shells in that pan, enough for 4-5 people to have a big dinner.
But I had enough filling and enact shells for 40 or 50 additional shells.
Two of these pans. Cover them and freeze them without baking them first.
Then all you gotta do when you get home from work is throw the frozen pan covered into
a cold oven. Turn the heat on 400 F, 200 C, and walk away. 45 minutes to an hour later,
it's both thawed and cooked. Be careful not to over-cook the filling. It'll get gritty.
It should be bubbling but still look kinda wet.
Just pull the foil off, turn on the broiler for a few minutes, and there's dinner. For
whatever reason, baked pasta dishes seem to get even better when they have been re-heated.
Now, while I often describe Italian-American classics like this as "big and sloppy," like the
tank-top-clad individuals who often prepare them, I make an effort to keep mine kinda tight — reduce
the sauce nice and dry, and don't put on too much. The way my grandma would make this the
plate would be flooded with orange water. I like a dried, firmer texture but you do you.
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Now put on a white tank top and eat.
Make sure to get a sauce stain on your belly, that really completes the look.