Is the food blog back? We’ll see, but for now, here’s something: my first ever stuffed shells! I’ve been wanting to make these for a while and finally assembled all the ingredients. The roasted tomato awesomesauce was part of the large quantity I put by in the freezer last summer, the chard was from the first farm share pickup of the season, and the basil came from the porch garden.
As it often my way, I looked at an assortment of recipes and combined them into something I thought would work. The “ricotta” is mostly a cross between two different recipes in Veganomicon. My original plan was to mix in spinach, but since I had the chard, used that. Good thing, too, because without it, I would have been pretty short on stuffing, so definitely pick a green, or if you can’t stand the idea of vegetables mixed in, make extra ricotta. You could also modify this recipe slightly for lasagna, which would maybe be a little less fancy but also save the stuffing time, though you’d have a higher pasta ratio.
The end result was quite delicious and I would definitely like to make this again. Leftovers have been fantastic. Even with the work of stuffing the shells, it was still pretty fast, and the most time-consuming part was our friend M. (who is a wonderful person, but a little slow in the kitchen) tearing and washing the chard. But if you use frozen greens, this is *really* fast.
. I think I slightly overbaked, but the long process of getting it out of the dang pan may have been a factor there, too. Although I called this whole wheat, like most whole wheat breads, there is still a fair bit of white flour. After a few days, I did what I always do with my sandwich bread and froze the remainder in slices. It toasts up beautifully from the freezer.
