Baked Pasta Shells Stuffed With Spinach and Ricotta
It might sound odd to introduce this as a baked pasta for summer, but that’s how I’ve always thought of it. Actually, I’d all but forgotten about it, but it popped into my mind recently, and I have returned to it happily. I’ve cooked it a few times in quick succession recently, and I feel it will be a mainstay of the summer which I hope is to come. True, I wouldn’t necessarily want to make this during a heatwave, but it’s perfect for an al fresco supper or weekend lunch when the air is balmy and the mood mellow. It is a simpler recipe than you might presume, in the sense that no part of it is difficult, though I admit it’s fairly process-heavy: you need to make the tomato sauce; mix up the filling; boil the pasta shells for 5 minutes; stuff them and cover them with the sauce before it all goes into the oven to bake. It feels like less of an undertaking, I find, if you’ve made the tomato sauce ahead of time and also if you use frozen rather than fresh spinach. (Indeed, I’ve decided to specify just the frozen in the ingredients list, as it
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