Thursday, December 16, 2010

Everyday Manicotti

I love manicotti--and I probably could eat it everyday! This recipe, from the current issue of Everyday Food magazine, is festive red and green (tomato and spinach) for Christmastime and quick and easy to assemble.

I had plenty of filling for 9 tubes and therefore used a bigger baking dish than the 8"x8" called for. I was happy to be able to use my polka baker again! A few of my tubes split a little, but the filling held them together pretty well.

There aren't many ingredients and although I think lemon zest is usually great, it kind of dominated the filling. Perhaps I had an extra potent lemon?! Also, I think the tomato sauce could make or break it. I made up my own batch of marinara as the bottled ones generally taste too processed for me--I am too spoiled by fresh, garden sauces. If I'd had some, I'd have topped it with some cubes of fresh mozzarella before baking. I used the parm called for by the recipe, which is good, but I missed stretchy cheese. At the point shown in the next picture, I fridged the assembled dish for a few hours until I was ready to bake it for dinner.

Here it is all baked and ready to serve.

It was good, but not super amazing. I'll make some variation of it again though. Jeff says, '4 stars', LOL!

3 comments:

knitseashore said...

It looks wonderful!! What kind of sauce did you make for this recipe? In other words, if I were to use canned tomatoes, how would I go about doing that? I used puree for the roasted vegetable lasagna and it came out pretty good.

Ginger said...

I have a great manicotti recipe -- you stuff them with refried beans and taco meat, then pour a mix of tomato sauce and salsa over, then bake. But, I hate stuffing the manicotti! I tried a pastry tube and cut-corner ziploc baggie but still wasn't very successful. The meat/bean mixture is too lumpy. Any suggestions?

Sarah said...

Hi Ginger! The tex-mex manicotti sounds great! I have never heard of that before, but I have had a mexican themed penne at a rather gourmet restaurant once that was very good. They are known for putting creative dishes on the menu, but they are limited time only, so if you fall in love with something you are out of luck the next time!!

I don't have any secrets for filling the tubes. This time I used a bag with the corner cut off. Other times I have carefully used a small spoon...but that takes a long time ;)