Sorta Manicotti, sorta not
I was inspired by the manicotti on sale at Safeway tonight. I knew I didn't want to be piping ricotta cheese filling into these things so I decided that I would be a little creative. Studied the recipe on the back to make sure I had most of the ingredients at home and bought the rigatoni on sale for 99 cents.
Got home (6:30pm!) and immediately put a pot of boiling water on the stove. Looked in the fridge for leftover ricotta cheese and noticed that I already had leftover cooked penne. Hmmm, i should use that instead. So threw in the rest of the dry penne from the box (i rarely make a whole box cause it seems to always go to waste) and some of the rigatoni (see again now I have a partial box of pasta), boiled it and then threw in the leftover cooked penne in the last minute to heat it up.
While that was cooking, I sauteed 1 chopped garlic clove then threw in the remains of the spinach (good thing I failed to pack that for lunch yet again) . After that cooked, I set it aside to cool. Then I mixed up the ricotta cheese, 1 egg, S&P, 1T of dried basil and about 1/4 C of shredded mozzarella cheese. Chopped up the spinach and added it to the cheese mixture.
Miguel mixed it all up for me - thank you Miguel! I have found that he loves to cook - he asks, "do you need any help mommy?" so I usually find something for him to do. He's a pretty good egg cracker :)
Pasta done, so I drain it, throw in the ricotta mixture and tossed it all up. I poured some marina sauce (also found this in the back of fridge!) in the bottom of a pyrex casserole dish and then poured the pasta mixture on top. I topped the pasta with some more marina and put in a 400 degree oven for 25 minutes. After that, I put more shredded mozzarella on top and put it under the broiler for 5 minutes.
It came out looking great! I was pretty happy that I had sorta made this dish up all by myself. Yes I know it's a standard manicotti dish, but I didn't have a recipe in front of me to follow and I used what I knew from cooking other dishes to make this. I finally had my own recipe for an easy weekday meal.
And it tasted pretty darn good :) Might try to liven it up next time with fresh basil, another garlic clove and maybe a little more marina sauce.
Got home (6:30pm!) and immediately put a pot of boiling water on the stove. Looked in the fridge for leftover ricotta cheese and noticed that I already had leftover cooked penne. Hmmm, i should use that instead. So threw in the rest of the dry penne from the box (i rarely make a whole box cause it seems to always go to waste) and some of the rigatoni (see again now I have a partial box of pasta), boiled it and then threw in the leftover cooked penne in the last minute to heat it up.
While that was cooking, I sauteed 1 chopped garlic clove then threw in the remains of the spinach (good thing I failed to pack that for lunch yet again) . After that cooked, I set it aside to cool. Then I mixed up the ricotta cheese, 1 egg, S&P, 1T of dried basil and about 1/4 C of shredded mozzarella cheese. Chopped up the spinach and added it to the cheese mixture.
Miguel mixed it all up for me - thank you Miguel! I have found that he loves to cook - he asks, "do you need any help mommy?" so I usually find something for him to do. He's a pretty good egg cracker :)
Pasta done, so I drain it, throw in the ricotta mixture and tossed it all up. I poured some marina sauce (also found this in the back of fridge!) in the bottom of a pyrex casserole dish and then poured the pasta mixture on top. I topped the pasta with some more marina and put in a 400 degree oven for 25 minutes. After that, I put more shredded mozzarella on top and put it under the broiler for 5 minutes.
It came out looking great! I was pretty happy that I had sorta made this dish up all by myself. Yes I know it's a standard manicotti dish, but I didn't have a recipe in front of me to follow and I used what I knew from cooking other dishes to make this. I finally had my own recipe for an easy weekday meal.And it tasted pretty darn good :) Might try to liven it up next time with fresh basil, another garlic clove and maybe a little more marina sauce.
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