It was only after I began to write up this recipe that I realised that there seems to be an unconscious theme emerging with my cooking. - it appears that I like to stuff things! I stuff vegetables with savoury meat, peaches with amaretti biscuits, chickens with lemon, garlic and bay leaf and enormous pasta shells with spinach and ricotta. I dare not even Google to see what Freud would have to say about all this 'stuffing' business.

In defence of my stuffing tendencies I must say that I did not always stuff helpless pasta shells, instead I use to stuff cannelloni. The problem though with cannelloni is that they tend be fiddley and time consuming and because of this I tend to not make cannelloni that often. So when I clapped my eyes on a bag of conchiglioni shells the other day the first thing that came to mind was 'these are big enough to stuff' - and that's exactly what I did.

Conchiglioni Al Forno - Baked Stuffed Pasta Shells

I find that conchiglioni are easier to stuff than cannelloni as they are less fiddley and you can whip up a tray of stuffed conchiglioni in no time at all. If I want Mr Fussy to eat conchiglioni I will leave out the 'green' stuff all together.


Ingredients

Tomatoe Sauce

400g tin of diced Italian tomatoes

680g jar of tomatoe passata

3 cloves of garlic

2 fresh bay leaves

Olive oil

Fresh parsley chopped

Splash of white wine

1tbsp sugar

Sea salt & freshly ground pepper

 
Ricotta Filling

750g of fresh ricotta

2 organic eggs

A bunch of finely chopped spinach

1 cup of grated grana padano

Freshly grated nutmeg

Sea salt & ground pepper

 
Method

1. Preheat the oven to 200C/400F/Gas 6

2. To make the tomato sauce heat some olive oil in a large frying pan. Add the garlic and bay leaf sweat until softened.

3. Add the tin tomatoes, passata, sugar, white wine and parsley. Season with sea salt and freshly ground pepper and simmer gently for 25 minutes.

4. Meanwhile cook the conchiglioni in a large pot of salted boiling water according to the instructions on the packet. Drain and set aside.

5. In a large bowl combine the ricotta, spinach, grana padano, egg and nutmeg. Season to taste and mix well.

6. Stuff ricotta mixture into the cooked pasta shells about 2 teaspoons in each. Pour a layer of the tomato sauce over the bottom of a 40x26cm roasting dish and place the filled shells on top.

7. Pour over the remaining tomato sauce and sprinkle with some more grated grana padano. Cover with tin foil and bake for 35 minutes. Remove the foil and bake uncovered for 5-10 minutes. Serve immediately.