Spinach Manicotti

Tonight I was able to cook the manicotti that I had made last night. It made for a very easy dinner tonight and I am pleased to say it was really good!

Here it is right out of the oven and all bubbly.....can you smell that?? It was divine.

The nice thing about this recipe was that you didn't cook the manicotti pasta first. From what I hear, filling slippery, fragile noodles is tricky. Tonight we had the manicotti with a fresh salad from the farm. I added some feta, olive oil and balsalmic vinegar.

It was a great way to use the spinach. Although the recipe contains quite a bit of spinach, it tasted very mild.

Proof of the mild taste of the spinach...

The verdict:

Produce: Spinach

Recipe: Spinach Manicotti

Zack: Good!

Heather: Great!

Gavin: Awesome! 5 star!

Brenna: Good (except for the green bits). Do you see a trend here?

Recipe

Spinach Manicotti

INGREDIENTS
1 (15 ounce) container ricotta cheese
A bunch of spinach. I have no idea how much I had. I filled up a medium sized bowl with the uncooked spinach. After I cooked it (see below) there was probably 1 1/2 cups -2 cups of spinach
1 egg
2 teaspoons minced fresh parsley (I just pulled some parsley off the stems with my fingers and tore them. Do you really want to measure 2 tsps of parsley??)
1/2 teaspoon pepper
1/4 teaspoon garlic powder
1 1/2 cups shredded mozzarella cheese, divided
1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese, divided
2 (26 ounce) jars spaghetti sauce
1 (8 ounce) package manicotti shells

DIRECTIONS
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Cook spinach in a couple of tablespoons of water in a large skillet. Cook for a few minutes until wilted down. Squeeze the water out of it before using.
In a large bowl, combine ricotta, spinach and egg. Season with parsley, pepper and garlic powder. Mix in 1 cup mozzarella and 1/4 cup Parmesan. Spread 1 cup sauce in the bottom of a 9x13 inch baking dish. Stuff uncooked manicotti shells with ricotta mixture, and arrange in a single layer in the dish. Cover with remaining sauce. Sprinkle with remaining mozzarella and Parmesan.
Bake in preheated oven for 45 to 55 minutes, or until noodles are soft.
Note
If refrigerating overnight, do so after step 3. Remove from the refrigerator 30 minutes before baking.

To fill the manicotti shells, I put the ricotta mixture in a large ziploc bag and cut a small hole. When I was almost done, I cut a bigger hole because I thought it would go faster. That was not so! It just made it messier.

Next time I am going to make two and freeze one.