Get Stuffed

They really are easy. There is absolutely nothing difficult about making stuffed shells.

For some reason, stuffed things are considered impressive. People find it amazing that you can put one thing inside another. This is a basic skill we learn as toddlers, people. You mastered this when you were 2. And so with this post I set out to prove to people that they really can put one thing inside another. There is absolutely nothing fancy about this dish. The ingredients are basic, as few as I could get away with, and the assembly takes little more skill than most kids have. Just don't burn yourself on the stove.

Stuffed Shells

What you need:

(as usual, I made as little as possible, but this is easily doubled)

• 1/2 box of large shell pasta
• 2 tbsp olive oil
• 1 onion
• 4 cloves garlic
• 1/4 c fresh basil
• 1 large bunch (or bag if your grocery is out of bunches) of spinach
• 1 c ricotta cheese
• 2 eggs
• 1 large tin of tomato sauce (this is the unseasoned kind, really just finely crushed tomatos, so yes, you could use a tin of crushed instead)
• 1 tsp balsamic vinegar
• 1-1/2 c mozzarella cheese

What you gotta do:

Start a big pot of water boiling.

Dice the onion and mince the garlic.

Lay a bunch of basil leaves on top of each other, roll them up, and slice the roll. This is called "chiffonade" ing the basil.

I've done it before with spinach, and Taneasha showed you basil in her salad post. You should be a pro at this by now.

Heat 1 tbsp of olive oil in a large pan. Sautee half of the onion and half of the garlic and half of the basil in the oil until the onion is starting to look soft.

Dump in your spinach.

Cover it for a bit to get the bottom layer wilted, then do your best to flip the not-wilty leaves down to the bottom.

Eventually, it will all be wilty and you can put it into a bowl.

Your water should be boiling by now. Add shells to it; 18 or 20 should do. Stir them every couple minutes so they don't get stuck to the bottom, or to each other.

Heat the other tbsp of olive oil in the pan you just dumped the spinach out of. Add the other half of the onion and garlic, and sautee them for a few minutes before pouring in your tomato stuff (sauce or crushed).

Oh yeah, salt and pepper. I always seem to forget to mention them in the ingredients and the steps. Add a bit of salt and pepper.

Add the balsamic vinegar,

and then the other half of the basil.

Give that a good stir and turn the heat down as low as you can while still letting it simmer gently.

Now, back to the spinach.

Add the ricotta and the eggs to the bowl that has the spinach in it and mix it well.

Are your shells done? Good. Stir the sauce one more time, then drain the pasta. You're going to need to rinse the shells with cold water a few times so you can handle them.

Now, I'm making dinner for tonight and for next week, so I'm using 2 pans, but if you're planning on feeding more than 1 or 2 people at once, you might want to opt for one large pan. Cover the bottom with a bit of oil, then spoon in a bit of sauce.

Now for the easy part. Yes, I know, it's been horribly gruelling up to this point. Confusing, hard to follow, advanced techniques, and bizarre ingredients we've never seen before in our lives.

Okay, so back to being toddlers. Hold a shell in one hand, and with your other, spoon some of the spinach-ricotta mixture into the shell. Okay, wait, you might have missed that: one hand has a shell, the other hand has a spoon. Spoon stuff into the shell. Concentrate. You can do it. I know you can.

Yay!

Okay, one down, 19 to go....

It's not the tidiest process, no, but the finished product hides a lot of the mess.

Once you've got a pan full of stuffed shells, cover them with more sauce, then layer on your cheese.

You can grate yours if you'd like, but I find it easier to locate indivudual shells if they've each got a nice little strip of mozza on top of them.

Bake them at 350 (totally preheated your oven, I know you did) for about 20 minutes, or until the sauce is bubbly and the cheese is nice and melty.

If you split yours into two pans, cover the other one with foil and freeze it. Take it out of the freezer in the morning and let it thaw in the fridge while you go about your day. That one will need more like 30 minutes to get hot and bubbly since it's starting at fridge temp.

Now, these things look lovely in the pan, but plating them...

Not the prettiest presentation ever, but they taste damn good, they require a minimal number of easily acquired ingredients, and you can make the filling and the sauce in the time it takes to boil pasta.

And they come off as very impressive merely because you managed to fit one thing inside of another.

Add a bit of nice bread, a tumbler of wine, and someone wonderful to share it with, and you've got a fancy schmancy dinner.

What do you like to stuff?

epic sammich is epic

There's nothing quite like muffaletta.

This is my last post before school starts. And my last paycheque so I went nuts at the fancy Italian deli. That place is freaking dangerous. Imported salamis, locally made cheeses, a dessert cooler with my nose print on it...

They even make fresh pasta in the store right in front of you. But I was not looking for hand hung linguini, oh no, I went straight to the back of the store (by some definition of straight that involves  stopping at the bakery, the jam aisle, the spice section, and the espresso counter) and started perusing the sausages.

I do love a nice hard salami.

Especially when it's stuffed into a muff... alletta.

Oh, come on, I had to. As if you weren't thinking it.

Muffaletta, the epic sammich of epicness

What You Need:

Olive Salad

• 1 jar giardinera pickled veggies mix, hot if you like it that way
• 1 jar manzanilla olives with pimentos
• 12 kalamatas
• 1 jar artichoke hearts
• 1 jar pickled mushrooms
• ½ jar capers
• 2 cloves garlic
• ¼ c parsley
• 1 tbsp oregano
• Vinegar
• Olive oil

The Sammich

• 1 loaf of round sturdy bread
• 100 g* dry salami
• 100 g thinly sliced ham
• 100 g pepperoni
• 100 g sliced provolone
• 100 g sliced emmenthal

*100 g = 1/4 lb for those of you who live in the only country in the world not smart enough to switch to the metric system.

What You Gotta Do:

The first thing you need to do is make your "salad." I'm not sure exactly why it's called salad, it's not the kind of thing you'd eat out of a bowl as a first course, or even as a last one, but I can't think of some other way to refer to it. 

Strain all the jarred stuff and dump it into the food processor.

If the giardinera has large chunks in it, you might want to chop those up a bit first just for consistency’s sake.

Coarsely chop the garlic and drop it in.

Add the parsley and oregano, and black pepper if you remember to.

Whiz this all for just a few seconds. You don’t want it too fine and homogenous or you lose the “salad” texture and end up with something more like a tapenade.

You’ll probably want to scrape down the sides then whiz for just a few more seconds to get everything chopped.

Spoon it back into the bigger jars, or if you have them laying around, 500 mL mason jars work great. You'll be able to fill about 2 of them. Don’t pack it down. You need space in there for the oil and vinegar dressing.

Splash in a bit of vinegar, about 1 tbsp of vinegar for each cup of salad. White wine is best, but red will also work. Pour in olive oil until most of the space between the tiny chunks is filled.

Put the lid on and give it a good shake.

Let this marinate in the fridge for a bit. It’ll keep at least a month in the fridge, if it lasts that long. It does make great gift basket fodder, but since it needs to be refridgerated you’d probably have to do the whole “canning” thing if you wanted it to be shelf stable. I’m going to leave that part to Taneasha to tell you about some day.

It's also great on a cheese and crackers plate, or as a pizza topping, and a few spoonfulls added to a bit of tomato sauce results in a tasty puttanesca perfect for spaghetti.

Now, to assemble the sammich of epicness.

Slice your round loaf in half horizontally.

You want a good sturdy loaf with a crusty exterior and a dense crumb inside. French bread will not work, the insides are too squishy. A good sourdough will do the trick, and that's what I'd planned until I saw the loaf of olive bread at the Italian deli.

Pull out the innards of the bread, leaving about a centimeter (half inch) of insides all around. You want the same buffer on the bottom and top of the bread.

Freeze the innards for use later on as crumbs or as the bread in a bread pudding, sweet or savoury.

The first layer is the olive salad. Top and bottom.

I guess the rest is kind of up to you how you want to do it,

but I suggest a single layer of each type of filling,

with a bit more salad every three, four or five layers.

Don't be shy about pressing it down and filling it with as much meat and cheese as possible. And make sure you get the layers all the way out to the edges of the bread.

Once you've filled both halves, flip the top onto the bottom and press them together. I find it's easiest to do if the last layer on the top half is cheese. It seems to stick a bit better and there's less chance of things falling apart.

Give it one last squish, then fold it up in a giant peice of parchment or wax paper.

Giant. Lift the edges up and centre the sammich in the bottom. Roll down.

When you get to the top of the sammich, tighten a bit, then press the sides down, fold them in like you would if you were wrapping a gift, then tuck them under.

Leave it there as long as you can resist it.

You can leave it in the fridge overnight even, just make sure you put it in something a little more air tight. This makes it a really handy make ahead lunch meal, like for a picnic or something.

When you can no longer keep your hands off it, unwrap it and start slicing it into wedges. Belive it or not, it will hold together.

I recommend slicing it into at least 6, but 8 is better, and do it all now.

Even if you're not planning on eating it all, slice it. The individually wrapped slices keep quite well. It's also much easier to slice when you have the rest of it around to maintain the structural integrity of the layers.

Layers!

So pretty and so freaking tasty.

What's your favourite layered thing?