Mama Vic's Vegetarian Manicotti
Vegetarian manicotti is a delicious and easy-to-make dish that's perfect for a weeknight meal or a special occasion.
Vegetarian manicotti is a delicious and easy-to-make dish that's perfect for a weeknight meal or a special occasion.
- 2 eggs
- 1 225-g box manicotti pasta (14 tubes)
- 1 bay leaf
- 1 filling and topping;
- 755 gram fresh spinach (9-oz), (alternately use frozen spinach)
- 1 small ricotta cheese container, (6-oz)
- 2 oz. parmigiano-regianno
- 2 oz feta
- 8 oz. mozzarella
- 1 tablespoon dried oregano
- 1 parsley small bunch
- 1 fresh basil small bunch
- 1 can your favorite tomatoe spaghetti sauce (or homemade)
- Carbohydrate 35.2925964285714 g
- Cholesterol 105.240857142857 mg
- Fat 16.8397035714286 g
- Fiber 5.16158564211641 g
- Protein 23.6873657142857 g
- Saturated Fat 7.82208878571429 g
- Serving Size 1 1 Serving (263g)
- Sodium 910.050928571429 mg
- Sugar 30.131010786455 g
- Trans Fat 4.68943328571429 g
- Calories 378 calories
Step-by-step
- Fill a large pot with salted water, add bay leaf and heat to boiling. Add manicotti. Cook about 12 minutes or as specified on box. Drain and rinse with cold water so rolls do not stick. Leave in the seive until it is time for stuffing.
- Now you should have 3 bowls; 2 medium and one larger sized bowl for the remaining ingedients. The larger one will be referred to as the filling bowl; one medium will be the cheese topping bowl; the other, for the tomatoe sauce.
- While pasta is cooking, cook spinach in small amount of salted water until wilted and drain in seive. Keep pressing down on spinach while in seive to get out every last drop of water. You can even squeeze it in your fist.
- Chop dried spinach and put into large bowl for filling.
- Add feta, ricotta, oregano and eggs to filling bowl
- Grate mozzarella and Parmigiano-Reggianno into the cheese topping bowl. Then remove about half of the cheese and add it to the filling bowl. Keep the rest aside for topping.
- Pour tomatoe sauce into the third bowl and add finely chopped parsley and basil and stir by hand.
- Stir filling ingredients by hand.
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees F
- Take out a good sized baking dish; add a spoonful of tomatoe sauce to bottom, and begin stuffing manicotti rolls. Lay them out in 2 rows. Cover with most of tomatoe sauce and top with most of cheese. Put remaining rolls on top. Pour remaining tomatoe sauce and cheese on top.
- Tent dish lightly with foil so that foil does not touch cheese and put into oven.
- Bake for 40 minutes
- Remove from oven and let sit at least 10 minutes before serving.
Swapping fresh spinach for frozen blocks alters the moisture balance in baked pasta significantly, often turning a firm filling into soup unless excess water is aggressively expelled. Fresh leaves require deliberate steaming and physical squeezing to remove cellular liquid, whereas thawed frozen blocks demand heavy pressing through a fine sieve to achieve the same dry weight. Without this purging step, excess water releases during the 350 degrees F oven phase, diluting the ricotta and feta matrix and leaving the pasta tubes structurally compromised.
The Mechanics of Spinach Moisture
Excess water destroys baked pasta integrity by boiling inside the tube rather than baking. Raw spinach contains roughly ninety percent water by weight, meaning 755 grams yields barely a fraction of dense solid matter after cooking. Squeezing this mass until no liquid drips from the fist is mandatory before combining it with eggs, ricotta, and grated cheese. Skipping this mechanical extraction leads to a watery sauce pool at the base of the baking dish.Layering and Structural Stability
Building layers requires strategic placement of sauce and cheese to prevent the manicotti tubes from drying out during the 40-minute bake. Tenting the baking dish loosely with foil traps steam initially, ensuring the pasta rehydrates evenly without scorching the surface mozzarella. Resting the dish for at least 10 minutes prior to serving allows the dairy proteins to set, which makes portioning clean slices feasible instead of yielding a collapsed heap. Leftovers freeze well for up to one month if wrapped tightly, though thawed portions release additional moisture upon reheating.
