Marcella 4EVR

on classic recipes, featuring stuffed shells 🐚

When I announced this newsletter, several of you asked if I’d be including recipes. This is a fair question, given that I wrote a food blog for a great many years, and I know that many of you are now reading this because of that. Thank you. I’m glad you asked. My answer: let’s say that I’m Linda Powell in Singles, and you’re Linda’s best friend Ruth, and

In late January of 2020, in the New York Times Cooking newsletter, Sam Sifton wrote about stuffed shells. It was one of his no-recipe recipes, breezy but rock-solid, the written equivalent of a friend on the phone walking you through cooking this awesome thing they made last night. This one was especially Sifton-y, a single paragraph using not one but two exclamation points and the word “copacetic.” I love that no-recipe recipes aren’t about THE! NEXT! BIG! THING! Instead, the point is to harness what you know and what you have and have a nice time making dinner with it. It’s sort of the Be Here Now of recipe formats. And with Sifton’s stuffed shells, you not only get a good meal in the present, but you also get a visitation from two friendly ghosts of food writers past: Craig Claiborne and Marcella Hazan.

I am not against novelty, but there is a firmness of foundation to the classics, a reassuring solidity, like a good piece of furniture. My father was a Craig Claiborne man. I’m not an especially Craig Claiborne woman, though I have my dad’s old copy of the New York Times Cookbook. I’ve never cooked from it. But my palate was calibrated, at least in part, by my father’s cooking, which was guided, at least in part, by Claiborne. Marcella Hazan, on the other hand, was not a part of my childhood, but I’ve tried to make up for it in adulthood. I first learned of Hazan from reading Luisa Weiss, I think, in her blog’s early days, and when I put Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking on our wedding registry in 2007, it was Luisa who bought it for us. In the fifteen years since, I have never made a better ragú than Marcella’s. (I’ve made one other that was as good, but it had more ingredients and was more work. Marcella 4EVR.)

What I’m trying to say is, there was no way I wasn’t going to make Sifton’s stuffed shells — and that’s not usually how I usually think of meals involving anything stuffed with anything else and topped with a sauce that’s simmered for five hours. The result was terrific. “His” stuffed shells became “our” stuffed shells. For me, they pack a similar punch to homemade lasagne, but lasagne feels like more trouble. You’re free to disagree. 

Now, when I think of early 2020, the last weeks of Before — oh Before, when we went maskless and carefree to the grocery store and used the word “aerosol” exclusively in reference to hairspray — I also think of this recipe. It exists across time, outside of time.

Of course, they are not quick. When I make them, I feel like I’m really doing something for my people. They’re one of June’s favorites, and whenever she requests them, I get a surge of oxytocin and pride — followed immediately by the sinking awareness that this will not be anybody’s thirty-minute meal. Stuffed shells is not difficult, but there’s usually a point when I’ve got cold cooked pasta in one hand and a pastry bag in the other and something is leaking where it shouldn’t, when I think, Surely there’s a less flamboyant way to show you love someone. And then, But I’ll probably stick with this one.

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Stuffed Shells à la Claiborne, Hazan, and Sifton

The last time I made these, I made the Bolognese the evening before, so I could coast across the finish line. Then I had only to boil a box of jumbo pasta shells (conchiglioni), drain them and shock them with cold water, stir up the cheese stuffing, stuff, surround with sauce, put in the oven, and let it ride. If you don’t have a pastry bag for the stuffing, there’s always a gallon-size freezer bag and a pair of scissors to snip a corner out.

INGREDIENTS

• 1 batch Marcella Hazan’s Bolognese, a recipe you can access online or in Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking, a book no kitchen should be without

• 1 batch Craig Claiborne’s Ricotta Cheese Stuffing, below

• 1 (12-ounce) box of jumbo pasta shells

• Parmigiano-Reggiano or Grana Padano, for grating

DIRECTIONS

You can read my handwritten notes-to-self on the scan below, if you can decipher them, but I’ll also write them here.

Make the Bolognese.

Make the cheese stuffing:

Don’t forget to salt the ricotta mixture, though Claiborne doesn’t mention it. I use at least a three-finger pinch of Diamond Crystal kosher salt, and I taste to make sure it’s not bland.

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.

Boil the jumbo shells according to the package instructions, but cook them a minute or so less than the recommended time. Drain them into a colander, and run cold water over until the shells are cool enough to handle.

Scoop cheese stuffing into a piping bag fitted with plain piping tip that’s wide enough for the diced mozzarella to squeeze through. Pipe the cheese stuffing into the shells. As you stuff the shells, arrange them in a single layer in a 9x13-inch baking dish. Top with the Bolognese sauce, dolloping it over and between shells. (N.b. It is normal for Hazan’s Bolognese to have a dry-ish texture; it’s not a recipe that winds up ‘juicy’ or pourable.) Sprinkle with Parm or Grana if you want to, though I usually do that after baking. (You could also top with some shredded mozzarella, if you so desire.) Cover the dish tightly with foil.

Bake until the whole thing is heated through and the cheese stuffing is gooey – about 45 minutes to 1 hour. If you put cheese on top before baking, you might want to broil it a bit for color after you take off the foil. If you didn’t put Parm on before baking, put it on now.

Serve hot or warm.