Baked Spinach & Ricotta Pasta Shells

This is an easy recipe I make all the time which always leaves leftovers for lunch the next day (even better) and smells amazing wafting through the house!

I like to really pack my shells with ricotta and spinach because I love the texture and it ups the protein, calcium and iron of the dish.

You can even make this a day before and leave it in the fridge until you're ready to bake it. As a nice little twist, you could stir through some roasted and pureed pumpkin into the ricotta mixture with a pinch of nutmeg and finish the recipe as usual.

If you can't find any jumbo pasta shells (I use Barilla) you could do this easily with some cannelloni shells instead. This recipe has got me hungry now, lucky I have some in the fridge leftover from shooting! And it's just about lunch time!

 YUM! Happy cooking!

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Baked Spinach & Ricotta Pasta Shells

by Melanie Lionello July-5-2016

An easy to put together dinner!

Ingredients

• 1 packet (330g) jumbo pasta shells, cooked as per instructions and cooled
• 800g ricotta
• 150g spinach leaves, chopped
• 1/2 lemon, juiced
• 1 500mL bottle passata
• 1/2 cup parmesan, grated
• a pinch of salt and pepper
• 1/4 cup parsley, chopped

Instructions

Preheat oven to 190 degrees Celsius. In a bowl, place ricotta, lemon juice, spinach and salt and pepper, mix together well. Set aside. Pour passata into a large baking dish and set aside.Begin placing the ricotta mixture into your cooled pasta shells, packing them quite full. Then place them into the baking dish on top of the passata. Repeat until you've used all your pasta shells.Sprinkle the pasta shells with parmesan and bake for 30 minutes.Serve with fresh parsley on top and enjoy!

Details

Prep time: 20 mins Cook time: 30 mins Total time: 40 mins Yield: 4 generous serves