Saturday Splurge

Tonight’s splurge is brought to you by some of Shannon’s favorite comfort foods: cheeses (yes, plural), noodles, and tomato sauce.  We started with this Three Cheese Manicotti recipe, except that by the time we had finished we’d made the following changes:

1. The Publix brand ricotta inexplicably comes in 15 oz. containers instead of 16 oz. containers, so I bought 15 oz.
2. It called for mozzarella, but I already had shredded cheese for another recipe and it was that “Mexican Blend” variety, so we used that, even though it doesn’t have any actual mozzarella in it.
3. We measured the MB/mozzarella-substitute cheese that went into the shells, but Matt just sprinkled the portion that went on top until it looked good.
4. We used an 8 oz. brick of Monterrey Jack cheese because, again, Publix doesn’t sell cheese in 6 oz. bricks, and I figure: How could you possibly ever have too much Monterrey Jack in anything?  The answer:  You can’t.
5. We used about 4 TBS of sour cream and the sour cream we had was fat free.
6. We omitted the parsley.
7. We didn’t end up using any salt or pepper.
8. We added about 1/4 cup of grated parmesan to the stuffing mixture.
9. We added about 2 TBS of prepared pesto to the stuffing mixture.
10. The shells didn’t fit into one dish, so we used two, which necessitated the use of more tomato sauce.  We ended up using about twice the amount that was called for.  Also, if you want to get specific, we used Classico’s Spicy Tomato and Basil spaghetti sauce.

Also–a tip that never seems to be included in any recipe, but which I use for everything that involves stuffing is the plastic bag piping method.  I use it for deviled eggs, icing cupcakes, filling pasta shells, etc. and it significantly reduces the amount of time it takes (and in the case of the cupcakes, makes for a much fancier product at the same time).  We did this tonight with the shells, filling one half and then going at the thing from the other side and it was super-speedy.

Here’s Matt tending to the noodles:

Here’re the two dishes of finished product, fresh out of the oven:

Ready for grubbin':

Add a salad on the side, a glass of wine, and trashy TV on the TiVo and you couldn’t ask for a better evening.  Change the game in mid-play and add peas, a cold beer, and Tech football on TV and you won’t have a better evening.  Guaranteed.