Ricotta & Spinach Pasta Bake

I think one of the reasons I find the slow cooker so boring is that I like to use my hands when cooking. This pasta bake is perfect because you get to mix the cheese and spinach and fill the pasta shells. If my son wasn't sleeping I would have let him have a go at stuffing the shells. The best part about him being asleep is that I can get dinner ready quickly, ahead of time, and without him clinging to my leg asking for some "cheeeeessse".

This recipe comes from the Women's Weekly Healthy Babies Cookbook. I've made it before and Oscar (and us) loved it. He normally has 4-5 pasta shells for dinner. The original recipe says to use 32 pasta shells but, being a big eater, I always use more and then always have too much left over and the pasta ends up being squashed all on top of each other. I swear next time I will only use 32 shells, but that's what I said last time!

Preparations

Here's what you need:
32 large pasta shells
500g spinach, trimmed
600g low-fat ricotta cheese
2 tbspn finely chopped flat parsley
700g tomato pasta sauce (I use Passatta as it's exactly 700g per bottle)
1/2 cup or 125 ml chicken* stock (I used home made stock today from the freezer)
2 tbspn finely grated parmesan cheese (or you could try with other type)
*use vegetable stock to make recipe vegetarian

Here's what you do:
Preheat the oven to 180C. Bring a large saucepan of salted water to boiling point and then add your pasta shells. Cook for 3 minutes only as you want them to stay firm, When done, drain and let them cool down. Chop the parsley and boil or steam the spinach, drain and squeeze out the excess water.

Ready to be covered with foil

In a bowl, add the ricotta, spinach and parsley and using your hands mix all together. In an oven proof dish, pour the tomato sauce and chicken stock and mix together with a spoon. Use your hands to stuff each pasta shell with the ricotta mix. Fill each shell quite full. Place the shell in the dish and repeat. When done sprinkle the top with parmesan cheese and cover the dish with foil.

Bake in the oven for 50 minutes and then remove the foil and bake for another 10 minutes. Leave it to cool for a bit before serving and you can scoop up some of the sauce to pour over the shells. Enjoy!