It’s time to reclaim the kitchen, folks. You may have seen my recent trip to Madison, Wisconsin to visit one of our favorite brands to work with, Wolf. Why do we have a soft spot for the brand? Because just like us, Wolf is passionate about growing a passion for cooking. For the past few years, Wolf has put together quite a few educational and inspirational resources on how to cook more (like this really sweet video, which makes me tear up because I’m so passionate on the subject).
This recipe and post are part of the #ReclaimtheKitchen initiative. The goal is to demystify home cooking by sharing actionable tips, tools and techniques to help you reclaim your kitchen. To do this, we’ve created a cozy fall recipe that is adaptable and can work for a dinner with friends or even a vegetarian Thanksgiving main dish: pumpkin sage stuffed shells! The shell filling is gooey and cozy, savory pumpkin mixed with ricotta and Mozzarella cheeses, with a bit of fresh sage thrown in. The stuffed shells are baked in our Quick & Simple Marinara, which compliments the filling without overwhelming it. It’s an impressive, showy vegetarian main dish that’s perfect for feeding a crowd. While it takes a bit of time to assemble the components, stuffed shells are fitting for a celebration or a pitch-in table. Best of all, our stuffed shells recipe illustrates a few tools (or “tricks”) that are important for reclaiming the kitchen.
Trick 1: How to make a quick marinara
For those of you who don’t have a go-to marinara sauce, here’s one that’s tasty and takes about 25 minutes. What’s the point of making your own marinara? There’s nothing quite like the flavor of a fresh batch. (However, if you’re in a time bind, there are a lot of high-quality marinara sauces out there these days, so don’t be ashamed!) The tricks to our quick marinara:
- Canned tomato puree: it has a bit of built-in tomato paste, and the sweetness helps to balance the acidity of the tomatoes
- Shallots: they have a more delicate flavor than onions and require less sauteing time
- Garlic: ok, that’s really our trick to anything!
- Olive oil + butter: The creaminess of butter helps round out the sauce flavor without simmering for hours
Trick 2: How to salt pasta water
If you’re not an Italian grandmother, you may not know this secret. First of all, make sure to salt your pasta water! Why? It results in tastier pasta. Second, salting your pasta means quite a bit of salt: the water should actually taste salty. Typically if we’re filling a huge pot, we’ll use about 1 tablespoon of kosher salt. Don’t worry, you won’t actually consume this much salt, as it disperses into the water.
Trick 3: How to quickly wilt greens
For these stuffed shells, we’ve used a trick we picked up a few years ago. Instead of cooking our spinach on the stovetop and dirtying yet another pan, we’ve used the boiling water from the pasta to wilt the greens. It only takes a few seconds. Simply place the spinach leaves in the pasta colander and pour some of the boiling water from the pot over the spinach. Even about half the water from the pot should be enough to entirely wilt the spinach. Then remove the spinach and finish draining your pasta. (You’ll squeeze out all liquid and roughly chop the spinach afterwards.) If you’re ever using spinach or greens in a pasta, this is a nice way to cook it without dirtying a pan. (We’ve also used this technique to cook red peppers in these Peanut Noodles with Napa Cabbage.)
Trick 4: How to quickly chop sage
This trick can be used for any leafy herb or green. The method:
- Chiffonade the leaves. This means stack the leaves, roll them up, and then thinly slice them. Watch this video.
- Lay the thin slices together and slice them the other way, resulting in a fine chop.
Meal-Prep Tips:
Healthy Eats 