Dinner

Chicken, Spinach, Ricotta Stuffed Shells

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One of my early inventions as a recipe artist. I wanted to make this, and found something similar that I adapted a bit to include the ingredients I wanted. This is one of those feed your family with goodness type meals – something you might make and bring over to a friend who’s family needs a meal. You know what I’m saying.

Let’s talk chicken and spinach: 1… I don’t do frozen spinach period. 2… I don’t like stems in my spinach so I take the extra 20 minutes to remove them one by one. 3…  My chicken is great. Here’s what I did:

Take about a 1.25 lbs or two halves of boneless skinless chicken breast. Give them a quick rinse and pat them dry with paper towel. Place in roasting pan and coat with olive oil and season generously with salt and pepper.

I covered my roasting pan with aluminum foil to seal in the steam. Bake at 400 F for about 30 minutes. Take it out and leave the foil and just let it cool slowly. After a while when it’s cool chop it all up.

Now here’s a little trick. There’s a whole lot of juice in the roasting pan when you’re done, so why not add that back to the chopped chicken.  That’s what I did.

For the spinach, we of course removed the stems because everyone knows those are gross, right?

We give them a rough chop and now we’re ready to cook it. Start out with some olive oil in a decently sized pan. Saute the onion for about 5 minutes until soft. Add more olive oil if necessary if things get dry. Next add about a tablespoon or so of garlic. Let that get fragrant for a minute or two. Now we add the spinach. Let it wilt down and develop a nice dark color.

So now we have chicken and spinach. Combine those with 1 egg (beaten), bread crumbs, Parmesan cheese, ricotta, basil, salt, and pepper. You are now ready to fill your shells.

Cook the pasta to al dente as per the inst ructions on the box. Grab a 9×13 baking dish or two and layer the bottom with your favorite marinara sauce. Stuff your shells and arrange them on the sauce. Top with another layer of sauce. Bake covered for 30 minutes. Uncover, add cheese, and bake 10 more minutes.

INGREDIENTS:

  • 1 12 oz package Jumbo Shells pasta
  • 2 TB extra virgin olive oil
  • 1 cup yellow onion (finely chopped)
  • 1-1.25 lb boneless skinless chicken breast or about 2.5 cups rotisserie chicken
  • 1 TB minced garlic
  • 1 egg, beaten
  • 15 oz ricotta cheese
  • 10 oz chopped fresh spinach (stems removed)
  • 1/2 cup shredded Italian 5 cheese blend (or grated Parmesan cheese)
  • 1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese
  • 1 TB chopped fresh basil or 1 tsp dried
  • 1/4 cup plain breadcrumbs
  • 1/2 tsp salt
  • 1/2 tsp pepper
  • 30 – 40 oz Marinara Sauce

DIRECTIONS:

  1. Boil water, add salt. Cook pasta shells according to package directions. Drain. Do not rinse. Set aside.
  2. Heat 1-2 TB olive oil in large skillet. Cook onion until soft (about 5 minutes). Add additional tablespoon olive oil if necessary, add garlic and saute until fragrant – about 1 minute. Add chopped spinach and saute until darkened, wilted and soft – about 3-4 minutes. Remove from heat, set aside.
  3. Rinse chicken breasts. Pat dry with paper towel. Add to roasting pan (I used the same 9×13 pan I later cooked the shells in). Coat in olive oil, salt and pepper on both sides. Cover pan tightly with aluminum foil. Bake at 400 F for 30 minutes. Remove from over and let cool covered. Chop chicken finely then add juices from roasting pan back to chopped chicken. Yields about 2 1/2 cups. Or use 2.5 cups chopped rotisserie chicken.
  4. Beat egg and combine with spinach mixture, chicken, ricotta, 1/2 cup Parmesan cheese, bread crumbs, basil, salt and pepper.
  5. Layer bottom of 9×13 roasting pan with marinara sauce. Add more sauce to taste on bottom because diners will probably want more to top on the shells after they cook.
  6. Stuff each shell and place in pan on top of sauce. Add more sauce on top of each shell. Cover tightly with aluminum foil and bake at 375 F for 30 minutes. Uncover and top with 1/2 cup cheese (shredded Italian or Parmesan) . Bake uncovered for another 10 minutes.
Side

Lobster Mashed Potatoes

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I’ve found my spirit animal mashed potatoes. If you just happen to have a small excess of lobster tails lying around, why not make these really decedent mashed potatoes with lobster sauce to go on top?

Just to be clear this is mashed potatoes with a lobster sauce to be technically correct – no lobster in the potatoes themselves. And why would you do that anyway? So here’s how we do it:

Boil some potatoes (red skin with skin on please) and melt some butter in a separate pan.

Oh, and steam your lobster tails in the standard fashion: water, lemon juice, salt, peppercorns, bay leaf etc. Pull those bad boys out of their shells, so now you have lobster meat.

Add the lobster to the melted butter, then add flour, heavy cream, seasoning (see recipe below).

Potatoes? Simple, just drain, pop them back on the stove (low heat) and add your butter, milk, boursin cheese if desired and beat with hand mixer.

Serve them up in a bowl with topped with lobstah sauce.

Lobster Smashed Potatoes (4 servings)

INGREDIENTS:

  • 6 medium “Klondike Rose” or similar redskin potatoes
  • 2.5 oz Boursin Cheese
  • 1/2-3/4 cup Whole Milk
  • 6 TB Butter (5 for sauce, 1 for the potatoes)
  • 4 oz Heavy Whipping Cream
  • 1 TB Fine Flour
  • 1/2 tsp Chili Powder
  • 1 TB Old Bay Seasoning
  • 3 small to medium lobster tails, removed from shell – either pre-cooked or lightly steamed

DIRECTIONS:

  1. Cut lobsters into small chunks and set aside.
  2. Wash and Cube redskins with skin on and boil until fork tender. (If you have the shells, you can place one in the boiling water for a while to add extra flavor to the potatoes).
  3. Melt butter in small sauce pan and add lobster meat to warm it up.
  4. Add tablespoon of flour and continue to heat to reduce raw flour taste.
  5. Add heavy cream, Old Bay and Chili powder to sauce pan and stir on low.
  6. Drain potatoes and place back on stove on lowest heat.
  7. Mix cheese, milk and 1 added tablespoon of butter to potatoes and mash to desired texture. (Skins will still be visible).
  8. Place serving on plate and pour sauce over top.
  9. Sprinkle lightly with fresh chives.
Side

Collard Greens

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Step one to this is kindof optional, but if you make your own broth, this will taste better. I’m no expert at making greens, but I watched a few videos (some good, some bad) and I read the comments. People be adding all kinds of stuff: bacon, butter, ham hocks, smoked turkey leg, onion, garlic, etc. But don’t add water, my friend; use chicken broth (homemade is best). My broth was made from a leftover rotisserie chicken. The key here is to impart so much flavor to the greens that you don’t even know you’re eating this stupid-healthy leafy vegetable because it tastes so damn good.

You need some kind of smokey/salty meat to add flavor. I wanted to do this with a smoked turkey leg, like in this video, but I couldn’t find one at a store and it’s too cold and snowy right now for me to get my smoker out. I couldn’t find ham hocks either – nor do I know how to prepare them, so I went with my one true love, the thing I know best, bacon.

INGREDIENTS:

  • 12 strips of bacon – cut into about 2″ pieces
  • 3 TB bacon fat (from cooking the bacon)
  • 1 onion chopped
  • 3 cloves garlic – chopped
  • 16 oz collard greens – chopped, large stems removed
  • 3 – 4 cups chicken broth – homemade
  • 1 tsp red pepper flakes

DIRECTIONS:

  1. Cook bacon over medium-low heat, slowly in a large sauce pan. Let the bacon cook until it’s just starting to get crispy and most of the fat begins to render out. Remove bacon and drain on a plate lined with paper towels. Pour bacon fat into heat proof container. Wipe out some of the loose bits of bacon from the pan – you don’t have to totally clean it. When this bacon is added back to the broth, it will have a nice chewy texture.
  2. Spoon 3 – 4 TB of the bacon fat from the top of the container you poured it into back into the large sauce pan. This fat should be clean with no residue in it. Re-apply heat and add onions and garlic. Saute until getting translucent.
  3. Add broth, red pepper flakes, and collard greens. Get it simmering. Add bacon. Cook, simmering, adding more broth as needed, until greens are done to desired level of tenderness and broth reduces. About 1.5 hours.