Recently, my parents came back from grocery shopping with these really large noodles that I've never seen before, and they wanted me to try to make something with them. They looked like oversized penne noodles. A google search told me that they were manicotti, and it seems like a lot of the recipes on the internet for this type of pasta use the same ingredients as lasagna. My parents think that I would to well on the game show Chopped, where you have to make a meal out of a bunch of random ingredients, so they like to bring back random things for me to try lol.
Ingredients:
14 manicotti noodles
The Filling
8 oz frozen chopped spinach, thawed
15 oz ricotta
1/2 cup grated parmesan
1 egg
1 tsp minced garlic
2 tbsp Italian seasoning
Salt and pepper to taste
The Sauce
25 oz container of your favorite pasta sauce
1 lb. package Italian sausage
1 medium onion diced
3-ish leaves of fresh basil cut into strips
Olive oil to sauté the onion
Salt and pepper to taste
Topping
1/3 cup grated parmesan
3-ish leaves of fresh basil cut into strips
Optional: a small handful of shredded cheddar cheese
Start by preheating your oven to 350, and cooking your manicotti to a little less done than al-dente, it will finish cooking in the oven. While the pasta boils, combine all of the filling ingredients together in a bowl.
When your pasta is done, dump out the pasta water, and then fill your pasta pot with cold water to cool it down and stop the cooking. Then, dry your manicotti off and put it on a plate to prepare it for filling. Now you can start your sauce! Start by sauteing your diced onion in olive oil until it softens.
Add in your Italian sausage and cook that through. In this picture I show what pasta sauce I used. I like 4 cheese pasta sauce a lot, but it's really personal preference. Of course, the lactose intolerant person prefers cheesy things lol.
Once the sausage was done, add in your sauce and simmer with half of your basil. Be sure to taste it at this point to see if you need to add any salt and pepper. I added a little garlic salt to mine, but it will really depend on your pasta sauce.
Once the sauce is done, get out your casserole dish and put 1/2 of your sauce on the bottom. This will prevent your pasta from sticking to the bottom of the pan. Then, start filling your manicotti. To fill the pasta, you can either use a slender piping bag, but I didn't have one small enough so I used a bar spoon. I put a small scoop of filling at the end of the manicotti, pushed it into the pasta with the back of the bar spoon, and then repeated until it was filled. It took about 30 minutes, so this dish is not for a busy weekday lol.
I ended up having two layers of noodles, so I put a thin layer of sauce between the layers.
Once all your noodles are filled, top your beautiful pasta babies with the rest of your sauce, your 1/3 cup of parmesan cheese, and the other half of your basil. I added some shredded cheddar here too just because I thought it would look pretty lol.
Bake this concoction for 30 minutes, the sauce should be bubbling by the end.
Serve be dividing up your manicotti noodles, and then scooping the leftover sauce on top. Garnish with a little bit more parmesan, and serve! This dish felt like a very high maintenance lasagna lol. Usually, the ricotta in lasagna is just plain, but I really like how the ricotta in this dish is upscaled with the parmesan, garlic, and spices. I'm definitely going to repeat this the next time I make regular lasagna. As for the manicotti pasta, it was a good, but stuffing the noodles was a tedious task. I think this dish is good for special occasions or when I'm feeling really inspired, but as a normal thing, I think it's impractical.
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