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.

Spiced Nuts

Over the last few years I’ve tried to make holiday gifts for anyone I’d like to give a small gift to (coworkers etc). Some years have been more successful than others to be sure. I’ve decided that it works out best when I pick one thing to make for everyone. This year I decided on a food gift. I wanted something foolproof. After a thumbing through my cookbooks and thinking about it for a while, I decided on Spiced Nuts. In one of my cookbooks I had found the index card that I had scribbled the recipe on after tasting the ones that someone else made years before. Since then, I make them each year around the holidays as a treat for us to have at home. They are pretty easy to make and are delicious, and much much better than anything similar that you could buy. Obviously, this gift does not work for people with nut allergies or for vegans (egg whites are involved).

Spiced Nuts

I am going to start taking more about the costs of ingredients. I think people might be interested, and it will be useful for me to think about. Here is what I bought for this project:

$65.08 for 8.39 lbs of nuts
pecans $18.35 (2.45 lbs @ 7.49/lb)
cashew pieces $16.01 (3.82 @4.19/lb
almonds $30.72 (2.12 @14.49/lb)

$2 worth of spices, (cardamom, ginger, cinnamon, coriander)also purchased in bulk. This is an educated guess, since I purchased quantities larger than I needed for this recipe for other uses, but it definitely wasn’t more than this.

$6 worth of sweetners ( I used regular sugar for some batches, date sugar for others, as some people would rather not eat sugar.)

$2.69 worth of eggs ( I used the better part of a dozen egg whites. I was able to use most of the yolks for other baking, but I’m just counting it here as a dozen.)

$9.75 (9.29 +tax) for 1 doz. quart canning jars

$10 on ribbons etc (mostly from the dollar store but I did decorate a few with some beautiful high end ribbon, but frankly the curly ribbon dollar store stuff came together better)

$95.52 was the total, which actually does seem like a lot for some nuts. But, this breaks down to $7.96 per gift (one gift=one jar), plus an entire Saturday afternoon to make (my free time = priceless). This works with my budget and my rhetoric.

I made 12 quart jars full. This was enough for what I needed, plus a couple extra just in case, that we will be only too happy to eat at home, if I don’t give them away.

Recipes abound for this stuff. I had my original recipe on my index card, which appears to be Martha Stewart’s recipe. A handful of recipes pop up on Epicurious. Turns out Alton Brown had the same idea (and there are plenty of recipes from the FoodTV crew.) The Splendid Table has another take. Seems like most of the usual recipe sites pop up in the results when you Google it. I landed on a version similar to my index card, with a few pointer’s from a sidebar in Cook’s Country (subscription needed) from December 2007.

I went with an egg white version rather than a butter version. I find the whole butter method a bit greasy after these things sit around (oh but for eating while still warm, it is divine.) I went with the oven method, because it would be easier to make a lot. I chose a combo of cinnamon, ginger, cardamom and coriander for the flavors. I picked my three favorite nuts pecans, almonds and cashews to blend together, although just pecans would also be a good choice.

Fresh nuts are essential to this recipe. I cannot emphasize this enough. The best nuts around here come from the bulk bins at local health food stores. The turn around of product is high and the quality control good. An added bonus is that you can by exactly what you will use in a relatively short amount of time (a few months max, refrigerated if possible). Nuts are oily and therefore will go rancid quickly in your cabinet (or on a shelf in the market), it’s a fact of life. They may not have spoiled enough to make you sick, but they will not taste as they should.

The same is true for the spices. I bought mine in bulk at the same time as the nuts. They were so fresh that their aroma filled the car on the way home. That said, the quantity of spice in the recipe is very important. You want enough so that the flavor comes through nicely, but not so much that it’s like eating potpourri. 8 teaspoons total was a good amount for each two pounds of nuts. The flavor was a bit strong fresh out of the oven, but mellowed a bit after the nuts cooled.

As far as technique is concerned a couple of key things stood out. First, draining the nuts for a few minutes after tossing them with the egg white and before tossing them with the sugar and spice made a big difference in the final result (not draining meant some of the nuts were surrounded by a thin crusty collar of baked egg white). Second, lining the baking sheets with parchment paper was absolutely essential–other wise the nuts would stick, even to a nonstick pan. The parchment also made it possible to use the same pans for each batch of the whole 8+ pounds (I only own three baking sheets–if I’d had to clean and dry them each time, I’d still be making the nuts instead of writing about it.) Third, a fairly cool oven toasts the nuts nicely, without there being danger of going from toasted to burnt in an instant as is the case with a hot oven. 300 degrees was just right, and I used an oven thermometer to check that 300 on the dial meant 300 in the oven (a slight adjustment was necessary).

After the nuts had cooled completely, I filled the jars. During the baking time of a couple of the batches, I had cut out circles of wrapping paper, using the lid of the canning jar as a guide. I had wanted the wide mouth jars for this, but all that the store had left was the narrow mouth style.

Decorative lid

I had picked out different, fancier paper with visions of using the wide mouth jars. The pattern did not work with the narrow mouth jars, so I used a different paper that I had on hand.

I finished the decorating with various ribbons. Pictured here is the classic “curly ribbon”.

Fits with the festive mood

So even if you don’t make them as gifts, it’s a good make ahead party snack, or just something nice to have anytime.

Recipe here.

Thanksgiving Feast 2008

I’ve been thinking about restarting this blog for a while. It seems only fitting to make the first post on a holiday centered around food.

This year, it was just the two of us for Thanksgiving dinner, so I decided to keep the meal fairly simple. I enjoy cooking, however I was looking forward to a relaxing few days off, and I didn’t want to spend all of my time in the kitchen. I also wanted to keep the leftovers to a minimum. I like leftovers, but not days and days of them.

We don’t eat dessert very often, so the Thanksgiving pies are something we really look forward to, and definetly made the cut. Another perennial favorite is oyster casserole, which is very rich, so I made that the main course. I wanted two vegetable sides that were relatively simply and not at all rich. We love roasted sweet potatoes so that was a natural departure from the more complex sweet potato casserole. I decided on skillet green beans with orange, maple and pecan. I also usually make another old favorite cumberland cranberry sauce from my battered copy of the Vegetarian Epicure.

Unfortunately none of the pictures came out well enough to be worth posting.

Since their classic recipe has been our favorite for years, I tried the revised pumpkin pie recipe in the current (Nov/Dec 2008) issue of Cook’s Illustrated. It was a bit lighter on the spices and replacing dried ground ginger with grated fresh was definetly an improvement. Maple syrup was added as a sweetner, something I had sometimes used as I appreciate the flavor of dark maple syrup in baked goods. It also incorporated sweet potato with the pumpkin. I have to say I like sweet potato pie as much as I like pumpkin pie, but I’d rather keep those two flavors separate. For future pies I think I’ll incorporate the fresh ginger and maple syrup in the classic recipe.

Instead of apple pie, I decided to make apple crisp, which I usually make a couple of times each fall. I used the three varieties of heirloom cooking apples that I have been enjoying in crisps this fall: calville blanc d’ Hiver, Black Gilliflower (a.k.a. Sheep’s Nose) and Belle du Boskoop. Each has a different level of sweetness and acidity and different texture when cooked. These heirloom varieties also have a floral quality missing from the modern varieties. I keep the seasoning of the filling simple, cinnamon, dark maple syrup, lemon zest and juice. As usual, I baked extra sharp cheddar cheese in the crumb topping. It was a success.

My husband is an idea man. On our way back home from a late morning stroll, he suggested having dessert first. So we had our pies (made the day before Thanksgiving) at lunchtime and ate the rest of the meal for dinner. We’re going to do this every year! We had a chance to enjoy our pie on an empty stomach and still have our fill at dinner.

For the roasted sweet potatoes, I again turned to the Nov/Dec 2008 issue of Cook’s Illustrated. Their excellent technique made this simple and delicious dish the best roasted sweet potatoes I’ve ever had. This is how I will be cooking them from now on.

For the green beans I improvised from a few different recipes combining orange juice and zest with maple pecans in a skillet. This would have come out better with younger and more tender green beans. In the future, I am going to stick with roasting any green beans that do not come fresh from the garden.

I have been making baked oyster casserole for years. Oysters, a little cream, bread crumbs and a little butter on top. It’s good, but I thought it could be better. I looked around on my usual recipe sources on the internet for ideas. I settled on Nathalie Dupree’s Southern Oyster Casserole on Epicurious. I left out the mushrooms (that just seemed odd to me) and replaced the bell pepper with celery and the scallion with shallots. It was delicious, the creamy sauce wasn’t too heavy and really allowed the briny taste of the oysters to shine through. I had planned for the cumberland cranberry sauce to complement the creamy casserole, but I forgot to serve it! I’ll have to come up with another dish to serve it with this weekend.

And there you have it, a mix of old tried and true favorites and some new ideas made for a great meal.