spinach and ricotta-stuffed shells with meat sauce

when i make a pasta dish i usually go for some kind of noodle and ladle a thick, rich sauce over it. but after the mac n cheese success, i decided to do a baked pasta dish this time. when i think "baked pasta," images of piping hot, oozing, cheesy lasagna and manticotti come to mind. i've made lots of successful lasagnas in the past so this time, i wanted to try a new technique: stuffing pasta.

for this recipe i wanted to develop a rich meat sauce that would coat and flavor a creamy, herb-laden filling in large pasta shells. let's see how it turned out.

i browned 1 lb of ground sirloin and defrosted and drained 1 small package of frozen chopped spinach. make sure not to overcook the beef or it'll become rubbery and grainy.

in the same pan, i poured off the excess grease from the ground beef and added 2 chopped onions and a few cloves of chopped garlic. this would then brown over low heat to caramelize the onions, creating a rich, sweet, oniony base for the pasta sauce.

once the onions were brown i added a few tablespoons of tomato paste to brown for a minute in the pan.

then a large can of crushed tomatoes was added to the pan, along with chopped fresh basil and thyme.

the sauce simmered for about 20 minutes to thicken it and develop and concentrate the flavors. the ground beef was then added to the pan to finish off the sauce.

while the sauce was simmering, i made a filling for the pasta shells by combining 2 cups of ricotta, the spinach, some chopped basil and thyme, salt, pepper, and an egg to help bind the ingredients together.

i then filled each cooked pasta shell with the mixture and arranged them in a large baking dish on a layer of meat sauce. the pasta shells were cooked to just barely "al dente" to keep the shells from going soggy in the baking process.

once the shells were filled and arranged, i covered the entire thing with the remaining meat sauce and grated parmesan cheese all over. this then went into a 400* oven for about 20-30 minutes.

as dinner was baking away, i popped open a bottle of cheap tj's chianti, a bold, fruity italian red wine that would go well with the hearty tomato sauce in this dish. decanting the wine in the new wine decanter that christien got me for my birthday helped mellow out the acidity a little bit and made it much more drinkable.

and voila! the pasta is ready and dinner is served!

the pasta filling was hot all the way through and the parmesan had melted over everything. i thought the presentation was pretty striking.

hearty meat and tomatoes dousing big pasta with creamy, colorful fillings. great visual appeal here.

and it also looked great plated on a deep white plate.

the sauce was rich from all the caramelization action from the ground beef, tomato paste, and soft, melty onions. this was a perfect foil for the creamy, cheesy ricotta filling, balanced out by the delicate flavors of thyme and basil. and being baked in the oven for a while ensured the dish stayed piping hot throughout dinner.

did this pass the test? a thumbs up from christien should do the trick.

baked pasta dishes can be very rewarding, both visually and gastronimically. but, i must admit, they're a pain to assemble from scratch. not only are you cooking everything from scratch, but you're also stuffing and arranging. but is it worth it? you betcha.