Stuffed shells. That's it.
What's the difference between a recipe for classic Italian-American manicotti and one for stuffed shells? In all honesty, not much beyond the pasta shapes. Both have a seasoned ricotta-cheese filling, which often has spinach mixed in, and both are baked with tomato sauce and mozzarella cheese.
We have a couple goals here: The first is building flavor, and the second is controlling moisture, which is always a risk with fresh cheese like ricotta and a water-laden vegetable like spinach. If, at the same time, we can eliminate needlessly complicated steps or superfluous ingredients, that's a bonus.One of the most important elements of this recipe is good-quality ricotta. Unfortunately, most of the ricotta sold in supermarkets is not good.
Next, we prep the greens. Traditionally, that would be spinach, but Kenji made a very good point when he was working on his manicotti recipe: Blanched spinach doesn't have much flavor. His solution was to use a mix of spinach and a more flavorful green like arugula, so that's what we'll be doing here, too. Arugula can be pretty peppery, but once boiled it loses a lot of its bite, so don't worry about that being a problem.
Beyond that, we mix a few more ingredients into the filling for more flavor, like minced garlic, freshly grated nutmeg, some grated Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese, shredded mozzarella, salt, and pepper. Some recipes add mascarpone and/or an egg to the mix, but I tested both and my blind tasters couldn't tell any of the samples apart, so I concluded they weren't essential.
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