Recipe video above. A lazy meal for midweek that tastes like spinach and ricotta stuffed shells or cannelloni - but without all the labour! Feel free to use your favourite store bought pasta sauce if you prefer. Reheats well and freezes well too!
Prep Time15 minutesmins
Cook Time40 minutesmins
Total Time55 minutesmins
Course: Pasta
Cuisine: Dinner
Keyword: spinach and ricotta, spinach ricotta pasta bake
Servings: 6
Calories: 569cal
Author: Nagi | RecipeTin Eats
Ingredients
300g / 10 ozziti pasta, uncooked, or other short pasta of choice
1 1/2cupsmozzarella cheese, shredded (or more! For topping)
Ricotta Mixture
1 lb / 500 g ricotta(Note 1)
1/2cupparmesan cheese, grated
2garlic cloves, crushed
350g / 12ozfrozen chopped spinach,thawed and excess liquid pressed out
Pasta Sauce: Pour out about 1/4 cup of the passata (to make room to add flavourings). Add the remaining Pasta Sauce ingredients into the bottle, screw the lid on and give it a shake.
Cook pasta for time per packet MINUS 1 minute.
SCOOP OUT 1 mugful pasta cooking water, drain and set aside.
Ricotta Mixture - Mix Ricotta Mixture ingredients in a very large bowl. Use a splash of pasta cooking water if needed to make it creamy.
Add pasta and stir to combine. Transfer to a heatproof baking dish.
Top with Pasta Sauce, top with cheese. Loosely cover with foil.
Bake for 25 minutes, then remove the cover and bake for a further 10 minutes or until the cheese is melted and bubbly.
Serve while hot and fresh!
Notes
1. Ricotta - Some ricottas are soft and creamy, others are a bit drier and more crumbly. Use pasta cooking water to loosen ricotta so it can be tossed through the pasta (see video for consistency).Spinach - or use 1 large bunch of fresh, shredded.3. Mixed Italian Herbs is a dried herb mix you can get from the supermarket which costs the same as other herbs. You can substitute with a mix of other dried herbs - basil, parsley, oregano and thyme go particularly well.4. Tomato passata is strained pureed canned tomatoes. Readily available in supermarkets nowadays, usually alongside pasta sauces, same price as canned tomatoes. US/Canada best sub - what you know as Tomato Sauce (eg. Hunts)5. Storage - Keep leftovers in the fridge and reheat in microwave. To freeze, assemble but do not bake, then freeze. Thaw then bake per recipe.