Baked Manicotti

October is Italian-American Heritage month, and long time readers will know that each year around this time we set aside our usual continental Italian fare to feature a dish from the Italian diaspora. This year, I’ve chosen Baked Manicotti, a dish that occupies a beloved place in the Italian-American repertoire—right alongside lasagna and baked ziti as one of the great baked pasta dishes that Italian immigrant families in North America built their home cooking around, especially along the eastern seaboard.

The mysterious origins of Baked Manicotti

Ordinarily, when I feature one of these diaspora dishes, I like to trace it back to its Old Country roots, comparing and contrasting it the continental Italian original from which the American version sprang. With Manicotti, I’m afraid, I’ve come up dry.

Baked Manicotti bears an obvious family resemblance to cannelloni, the tubular stuffed pasta found in parts of Italy, particularly the area around Naples. It involves the same basic idea—a tube of pasta stuffed and baked under sauce. In fact, Jeanna Caròla Francesconi has recipe in her classic cookbook La cucina napoletana for cannelloni alla sorrentina that is very close indeed to Baked Manicotti. But the resemblance may be no more than that.

Go looking for manicotti on a shelf in Italy and you won’t find it. What you will find is cannelloni, a smooth-sided. slender tubular pasta, quite distinct from the ridged, sturdier tube sold in North America as manicotti. What’s more, the word ‘manicotti’ itself has no real currency in Italy, at least as a culinary term. It first appeared in American restaurant guides and food columns. The dish seemingly came into its own sometime in the 1920s, right as Italian immigrant cooking was taking firm hold in North American cities. Whether Baked Manicotti is a genuine descendant of cannelloni or something developed independently in an Italian-American restaurant or home kitchen is, as far as I can tell, simply not known.

A lighter baked pasta

In the Italian-American repertoire, what distinguishes manicotti from its baked-pasta cousins is a certain lightness. Whereas Italian-American lasagna and baked ziti typically include a long-simmered Sunday Sauce, thick with meat and simmered several hours to develop deep flavor, manicotti is usually meatless, its cheese filling left to be the star of the dish, dressed with nothing more than a simple, light tomato sauce, the kind Italian-Americans call ‘marinara’. That makes for a touch lighter than its cousins—and, happily, a good deal quicker to put together. This isn’t quite a weeknight pasta, but there’s no real reason to save it only for holidays and special occasions, either.

The dish itself is straightforward enough: manicotti are briefly parboiled, then filled with the ubiquitous trio of ricotta, mozzarella, and Parmesan, bound with egg and brightened with a bit of parsley, then nestled into a dish with the marinara, topped with more mozzarella, and baked until bubbling and lightly golden.

I hope you’ll give it a try—it’s a wonderful dish for a crowd, and, for the Italian-Americans out there, a fitting way to mark the month.

Ingredients

Serves 4-6

• 12 manicotti pasta tubes
• salt

For the filling:

• 2 cups ricotta cheese
• 2 cups mozzarella cheese, shredded or cut into small cubes
• 1 cup freshly grated Parmesan or pecorino romano cheese
• 2 large eggs
• A couple of sprigs of fresh parsley, finely minced
• salt
• 1/4 tsp black pepper

For the sauce:

• 1 large can of peeled tomatoes, passed through a food mill, or 1 bottle of tomato passata
• 1 small onion, finely minced
• 2-3 cloves garlic, finely minced
• olive oil
• salt

For the topping:

• mozzarella cheese, finely shredded, to taste
• freshly grated Parmesan or pecorino romano cheese, to taste
• olive oil

Directions

Prepare the sauce

In a large saucepan or saucier, gently sauté the onion in abundant olive oil until soft and translucent. Take care not to brown the onion.

Add the garlic and, as soon as you can smell its aroma, add the tomato. Simmer gently for 20 minutes or so, until it has well reduced into a saucy consistency. By the end, the oil should separate from tomato.

Pre-boil the manicotti

While the sauce is simmering, bring a large pot of well salted water to a boil. Throw in the manicotti and cook until very al dente.

Drain the manicotti well, then immediately plunge them into a bowl of ice water for a moment, until they are cool to the touch. Then drain in a colander until needed.

Prepare the filling

In a mixing bowl, mix the ricotta with the mozzarella and grated parmigiano-reggiano cheese. Add the eggs and chopped parsley and mix again. Season generously with salt and pepper. The mixture should be very savory.

Assemble and bake

Take a baking pan or casserole large enough to hold all the manicotti in a single layer. Spoon a thin layer of the tomato sauce on the bottom.

Now take the manicotti, one by one, and fill them with the ricotta mixture. (A pastry cream bag or just a ZipLock with one of the corners clipped off makes this job easier but a simple spoon will do.)

Lay the filled manicotti in the baking dish. Nap them well with sauce, making sure that the paste is entirely covered without smothering them.

Sprinkle with the mozzarella and then the grated Parmesan. Drizzle the top with olive oil. Drizzle a little water (say 1/2 cup) around the edges.

Bake covered in a moderate 350F (180C) oven for 25 minutes, then uncover and bake for another 15 minutes, or until any excess liquid has cooked off and, if you like it that way, the top has browned a bit.

Serve

Remove the baking dish from the oven and let the manicotti settle for about 5-10 minutes before serving. Accompany with additional grated cheese and any remaining sauce for those who want them.

Notes on Baked Manicotti

Even when making a homey, unpretentious dish like this one, it still pays to choose your ingredients with care. I shudder at the recipes I see that call for jarred sauce, for example. If you’re going to the trouble of making baked pasta, then do take the extra time to make your own sauce!

Choosing the pasta

It’s easy enough to find manicotti on this side of the Atlantic. Barilla, Ronzoni, Prince, DeLallo and in Canada Catelli all carry it, and any American supermarket will likely have at least one of these on the shelf. There’s a funny irony here: even Barilla, as Italian a company as they come, makes their manicotti not in at their home based in Parma but at a plant in Canada, purely for the North American market. It seems even Italy’s most famous pasta maker has concluded that manicotti is a dish for us, not for them!

Readers outside the US and Canada may have a harder time of it. (A reader in the UK tells me that, whlle usual, it is sold there.) Cannelloni, happily, makes a perfectly good substitute—same basic tube, just smooth rather than ridged, and about as common in Italy as manicotti is here.

Cheeses

There’s no real need to splurge on hand dipped ricotta to make Baked Manicotti, though it would certainly elevate the dish. But do be sure your ricotta is well drained. Otherwise, you may wind up with the stuffing oozing out to make a soggy mess.

For the mozzarella, this is one dish where the dry variety sold wrapped in plastic works better than fresh. Some mozzarellas are sold specifically for the meltability—those are the ones to look for. Avoid pre-shredded mozzarella like the plague. Like all pre-shredded cheeses, it’s treated with corn starch or other additives to prevent it sticking. Trouble is, those additives also prevent it melting properly.

As for the grated cheese, you can use grated Parmesan or, for a bit more oomph, pecorino romano. But whichever one you choose, do grate it fresh. Pre-grated cheeses, especially Parmesan, lose their flavor very quickly, though here pecorino, with its sharper flavor, is less forgiving. It’s fine to use if you prefer.

You will notice I’ve used the term ‘Parmesan’ here rather than parmigiano-reggiano. Since this is an Italian-American dish, a domestic Parmesan works well here, though a bit like using hand-dipped ricotta, if you want to elevate the dish, go ahead and use the good stuff.

Tomato

As indicated in the ingredients list, the tomato can take the form of canned tomatoes which you’ve passed through a food mill, which is my preference, or a bottle of tomato passata, which is less work. You could also go for crushed canned tomatoes.

If you do go for the passata, be aware of that many brands are very thick indeed. If so, add a cup or so of water to the saucepan so you have a fairly thin sauce to begin with that can simmer down. I like to drizzle the water into the bottle the passata came in, and swish it around then pour it into the pan. This way you don’t lose a drop of the passata.

And speaking of simmering down, also take into consideration that the sauce will thicken and reduce considerably in the oven. The pasta will absorb quite a bit, then evaporation will reduce it more. So make sure the sauce has a loose consistency and use a fair amount of it. Enough to cover the pasta well without, on the other hand, smothering it.

Crepe Manicotti

Many Italian-Americans, especially those with Sicilian roots make manicotti with crepes—crespelle in Italian—rather than the store bought pasta, which, of course, crepes make the dish even lighter. This may, in fact, be the older version of the dish, as some food historians trace the origins of manicotti to Italian crespelle.

You can refer to this recipe for making the crepes. You then lay them out, slather them with the cheese filling, the roll them up and proceed as per the main recipe above.

Other Variations

Probably the most common variation on this basic recipe is adding spinach to the stuffing. You briefly cook about 1 lb (500g) spinach in a dry pan just until it wilts, let is cool, then squeeze it dry and chop it finely before you add it to the mix. For lazy cooks, about 10z (280g) chopped frozen spinach works well, too.

While the trio of ricotta, mozzarella and Parmesan are classic mix for the filling, you will see recipes that stray into more or different cheeses. For instance, some recipes have you add cream cheese or mascarpone for a richer, creamier consistency. Pecorino, as noted already, adds more oomph than Parmesan. In a similar vein, you can use a mild provolone instead of, or in addition to, the mozzarella for a sharper flavor. And cottage cheese sometimes replaces the ricotta, though if you ask me, the less said about that variation, the better…

As noted above, a classic Baked Manicotti is meatless, with a light marinara type tomato sauce, but if you want a more substantial dish with deeper flavor, you could use Sunday sauce instead of a simple marinara. This is also what Francesconi’s cannelloni alla sorrentina calls for.

Making Baked Manicotti ahead

Baked Manicotti, like its cousin Italian-American baked pastas, actually lends itself rather well to making ahead. You reheat it gently in the oven at say 160C/324F for about 15-20 minutes. And if you have a steam oven, even better; setting it at 60% humidity will help your Baked Manicotti from drying out.

Print Recipe

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Baked Manicotti

An Italian American classic

Course: Primo

Cuisine: Italian-American

Keyword: baked

Servings: 6 as a first course, 4 as a main

Calories: 657.5kcal

Ingredients

• 12 manicotti pasta tubes
• salt

For the filling:

• 2 cups ricotta cheese
• 2 cups mozzarella cheese shredded or cut into small cubes
• 1 cup freshly grated Parmesan or pecorino romano cheese
• 2 large eggs
• A couple of sprigs of fresh parsley finely minced
• salt
• 1/4 tsp black pepper

For the sauce:

• 1 large can of peeled tomatoes passed through a food mill, or 1 bottle of tomato passata
• 1 small onion finely minced
• 2-3 cloves garlic finely minced
• olive oil
• salt

For the topping:

• mozzarella cheese finely shredded, to taste
• freshly grated Parmesan or pecorino romano cheese to state
• olive oil

Metric – US

Instructions

Prepare the sauce

• In a large saucepan or saucier, gently sauté the onion in abundant olive oil until soft and translucent. Take care not to brown the onion.
• Add the garlic and, as soon as you can smell its aroma, add the tomato. Simmer gently for 20 minutes or so, until it has well reduced into a saucy consistency. By the end, the oil should separate from tomato.

Pre-boil the manicotti

• While the sauce is simmering, bring a large pot of well salted water to a boil. Throw in the manicotti and cook until very al dente.
• Drain the manicotti well, then immediately plunge them into a bowl of ice water for a moment, until they are cool to the touch. Then drain in a colander until needed.

Prepare the filling

• In a mixing bowl, mix the ricotta with the mozzarella and grated parmigiano-reggiano cheese. Add the eggs and chopped parsley and mix again. Season generously with salt and pepper. The mixture should be very savory.

Assemble and bake

• Take a baking pan or casserole large enough to hold all the manicotti in a single layer. Spoon a thin layer of the tomato sauce on the bottom.
• Now take the manicotti, one by one, and fill them with the ricotta mixture. (A pastry cream bag or just a ZipLock with one of the corners clipped off makes this job easier but a simple spoon will do.)
• Lay the filled manicotti in the baking dish. Nap them well with sauce, making sure that the paste is entirely covered without smothering them.
• Sprinkle with the mozzarella and then the grated Parmesan. Drizzle the top with olive oil. Drizzle a little water (say 1/2 cup) around the edges.
• Bake covered in a moderate 350F (180C) oven for 25 minutes, then uncover and bake for another 15 minutes, or until any excess liquid has cooked off and, if you like it that way, the top has browned a bit.

Serve

• Remove the baking dish from the oven and let the manicotti settle for about 5-10 minutes before serving. Accompany with additional grated cheese and the remaining sauce.

Nutrition

Calories: 657.5kcal | Carbohydrates: 31.6g | Protein: 30.1g | Fat: 45.7g | Saturated Fat: 18.3g | Polyunsaturated Fat: 3.3g | Monounsaturated Fat: 21.1g | Cholesterol: 145.6mg | Sodium: 4141.3mg | Potassium: 277mg | Fiber: 1.4g | Sugar: 2.4g | Vitamin A: 888.2IU | Vitamin C: 1.5mg | Calcium: 558.6mg | Iron: 1.4mg