Baked Manicotti

One of our favorite recipes in my household is Baked Manicotti. Sheets of fresh pasta are rolled around a ricotta and mozzarella filling, nestled in a dish, slathered with a simple tomato sauce and baked until bubbly. Simple? Yes. However, I’ll borrow an expression from someone I know, this stuff is “so good that you could hurt yourself”.

After some discussion of the possibilities, we decided to make this for our Christmas dinner, knowing full well that there would be leftovers to enjoy the next day; Christmas all over again.

I had no experience with this dish until the January/February 2007 issue of Cook’s Illustrated. There I read a recipe for making baked manicotti that bypassed stuffing the traditional manicotti pasta tube. I was immediately intrigued by this recipe. The author describe a tedious, if not disastrous, process of stuffing pre-shaped pasta tubes, and the subsequent epiphany of rolling the filling inside pasta sheets. It sounded like something that would function like a lasagna, but might actually be a bit easier to pull together. The first time I tried it, we were hooked.

Now I did make one major variation from the recipe as published. As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, my husband can’t eat wheat. Therefore the pasta recommended in the recipe was not an option. The recipe calls for using no-boil lasagna noodles, Ronzoni being CI’s favorite brand. The noodles are soaked briefly, drained and then filled and rolled to create the manicotti tubes. A little further investigation revealed that the no-boil noodles are thinner than the regular noodles. I thought, “oh well we can make our own pasta in sheets for this.”

Kneading the pasta dough

So you might be rolling your eyes and saying “oh yeah, that’s what you thought, I’m so sure.” Look, we had been making our own pasta for years prior to the discovery that we can’t use wheat flour in our kitchen. We were very happy to discover that we could just as easily make fresh pasta from flours other than wheat. Again, we owe a debt of gratitude to the late Bette Hagman for her recipe for bean flour pasta in her book The Gluten Free Gourmet. The bean flour recommended in the recipe is garfava flour, however straight garbanzo flour works well also (both are readily available at health food stores and some supermarkets.) This pasta has a wonderful flavor, and when cooked is as light as a feather. (If you have not ever tasted fresh pasta, wheat or gluten free, and by fresh I mean pasta that has not been dried for packaging, you really need to try it. It’s light and airy and just a whole different experience that the dried stuff.) I should think any traditional Italian fresh pasta recipe would work for this manicotti recipe, as would purchased ready made fresh pasta sheets

It’s not a work day recipe, as far as I’m concerned. Making pasta isn’t hard, but it is specific, and it does take some time, but not hours and hours. My husband Chris has turned out to be the pasta making master in the family, and it’s his hands in the pictures that you see making the pasta. Rolling the dough out for this recipe could be accomplished with a rolling pin, since no special shapes are required other than something at least vaguely rectangular. We do have a hand crank pasta machine, and it does make rolling out easier, faster and more consistent. (Ours is the Al Dente brand, which is not necessarily the highest rated, but it has served us well for about 5 years). There are electric ones out there, as well as attachments for the Kitchenaid standing mixer, but I don’t know anything about them.

Rolling out the pasta I

Rolling out the pasta II

Ready to be manicotti

Alright, so enough already about the pasta. The sauce is a super basic tomato sauce flavored with garlic, red pepper flakes and olive oil. Normally fresh basil and parsley are included, but it is December in New England, and the fresh parsley and basil that was in the market when I was shopping was dismally substandard, so I decided to skip them both. (I certainly could have tried going round to some other stores, but I just wanted to go home.) I do have dried basil from the plants that were in my garden this past summer, so it still has a good amount of flavor. The ricotta filling is similar to what you would find in a lasagna recipe, mixed with eggs, salt and pepper, Parmesan cheese, basil (and normally fresh parsley, but as I mentioned, it was a no go).

Like any simple recipe the quality of ingredients is imperative. Good ricotta is a wonderful thing. Bad ricotta is like chalky cottage cheese–your basic nightmare. Please remember, it is a major player in this particular recipe. Ricotta is traditionally made from the whey leftover from making Romano. There are recipes out there for making your own ricotta. If you’ve gotten in to making your own fresh cheeses, such as paneer, this is something to consider. If like most of us you’re buying your ricotta, don’t cheap out. If you can get hold of some local artesian stuff at your farmer’s market, or if your local Italian market makes their own, by all means go with that. Please please please if you are shopping for ricotta in the supermarket, buy Calabro. (Whole Foods may be the only national chain in the US that carries it; I’ll look into it more.) Pester your supermarket people to carry it if they don’t. I’m not just plugging these guys because I’m originally from CT, where they are based. I’m not going to name names, but all of the other major national brands have gums and stabilizers,which, despite lengthening their shelf life, just make them taste terrible. Period. I’m not even of Italian ethnic heritage and I understand this.

I have similar opinions about Parmesan cheese, but I am going to refrain from carrying on about them here.

Making the pasta is the most involved part. You can have the sauce bubbling while you mix up the filling. Then, once your pasta sheets are rolled out and cut to size, you’re ready to go.

Ready to be rolled

Nestled in, ready for the sauce and the oven

I’m pushing it a bit by crowding them in, but I did not want to start another pan.

Sauced

After 40 minutes or so in the oven, you have an incredible pasta experience. All you need to round out the meal is a simple salad.

It fell apart a bit while serving, but no one cared.

The photos are here.