An easy but impressive pasta dish that’s great for a weekend lunch with friends. It’s a Gennaro Contaldo recipe for the Good Food Channel website that was part of the Spring photoshoot I cooked for last month.
I got a bit stressed about not being able to source giant pasta shells, so in the end my friend’s husband came to the rescue and got a packet at the very lovely Whole Foods in central London. It turns out that Tesco sells them as part of their revamped Finest* range so you don’t have to live near a swanky Italian Deli at all. Also, be aware that they do expand with cooking, so if you feel like they’re a bit on the medium side of giant when you buy them, fear not!
What I particularly love about this dish is that it’s easy to prepare but looks and tastes impressive. You start off by making a very simple tomato sauce to sit underneath and on top of the pasta. Then you cook the shells and stuff them with a creamy ball of ricotta, mozzarella and parmesan that’s wrapped in a basil leaf. The whole thing is covered with yet more cheese and baked in the oven. This is proper comfort food.
So if you’re entertaining over the Easter holidays or just want to reward yourself at the end of a long day of dragging the kids around a museum or three I’d heartily suggest getting a dish of this on the go… pop on over to the Good Food Channel website for the recipe.
I’m entering this delicious recipe into the Pasta Please challenge… a fab event dreamed up by Jac at Tinned Tomatoes.hosted in April by Sliceoffme. The essential ingredient for this month is Olive Oil… of course there’s a dash in this dish!
Fab recipe Katie, I really like that the new Tesco Finest range makes such ingredients so easily available. The photo in your post by Sharron is abso gorgeous! The very thought of all that cheese is comforting enough. Thank for linking up with the #PastaPLease challenge for April’14!
Thanks for stopping by to comment! Yes the new Finest range at Tesco is brilliant… they’ve really pulled their socks up lately. Sharron’s photography rocks doesn’t it… love it when she snaps my food 🙂 Looking forward to checking out the mouth watering round-up of Pasta Please too xx
Thanks Katie here’s the link to my round up for #pastaplease for april2014!Cheers!
http://sliceoffme.wordpress.com/2014/05/03/pasta-please-challenge-april14-round-up/
Love the look of this. There’s nothing like a nice pasta dish and a big side salad – with garlic bread of course!
Have to agree with you Jan!
ooh not made pasta shells in ages – will pop over and check out your recipe x
Thanks Nazima – it’s well worth the effort.
Slightly love Genarro Contaldo, met him recently and quite wanted to go off on a forage with him – he was insistent on showing us all his foraging pics!! A really lovely recipe and luckily my local Italian deli do stock these mahoosive shells!
Foraging with Gennaro – sounds filthy!!!!! Or is that just me and my one track mind??!!
So it’s not just me! I use the large shells, conchiglioni as a meal for surprise guests and I looked in tesco and sainsburys but found nothing! I use cannelloni tubes instead. Your recipe looks gorgeous and heaving with all the right stuff x