Stuffed Paccheri

Paccheri is a type of large tube pasta resembling short manicotti and common to southern Italian cuisine. Their size and shape make them very versatile so they can be served either with a chunky sauce or stuffed. Either way, they make an interesting and unusual plate presentation for friends. You probably won't find them in a supermarket but they are readily available at Italian food markets or from on-line Italian food web sites. I would recommend always having a variety of dried pasta shapes in the pantry. But, if you are a regular reader of this blog you probably already have half a dozen or more on the shelf.  : )

Paccheri can be stuffed with anything from cheese, to meat, to seafood, to vegetables and herbs in a variety of combinations. We made these filled with a mixture of ricotta and seasoned ground pork with a tomato sauce and topped with cheese. Use your own measured creativity for filling and the sauce ingredients. Just have a little fun with these things.

The ingredients below will make 22-25 paccheri with sauce. This will be enough for two people with left-overs (and you know this is even better the next day) or enough for 4 people with two sharing each crock. Our crocks are 6" diameter by 2 1/4" tall.

Ingredients for the stuffing:

1/2 lb ground pork 
1 1/2 cups ricotta cheese
1/2 cup shredded mozzarella cheese 
2 teaspoons fennel seeds crushed
1/2 teaspoon herbes de provence
I tablespoon fresh flat leaf parsley chopped
1 tablespoon pine nuts toasted
9 Kalamata olives pitted and chopped
Olive oil as needed
Salt and pepper

Ingredients for the sauce:

1 28 oz can peeled whole tomatoes preferably San Marzano
1/2 yellow onion diced
3 cloves garlic minced
1 tablespoon fresh chopped basil
2 tablespoons fresh chopped flat leaf parsley
1/2 teaspoon red pepper flakes
2 tablespoons olive oil
5 grape tomatoes cut in half, basically for looks but you could put one on top of each filled paccheri, that would be pretty cool.
Salt and pepper

Directions:

- Preheat the oven to 375
- Start the pasta water to boil

- Brown the ground pork along with the herbs and salt and pepper to taste
Scrape the meat into a bowl to cool but don't clean the pan just yet.
When cool, mix in the ricotta, mozzarella, fennel seeds, herbs de provence, parsley, pine nuts, olives and a little olive oil.

- Boil the paccheri for about 5 minutes, enough to make them pliable so they can be stuffed. They will finish cooking in the oven. Drain and put them in cold water to stop the cooking, this also allows them to cool and prevents them from sticking together. 

- In the same pan you browned the meat, add a tablespoon of olive oil and saute the onion and garlic. 
Add the tomatoes and their juice, crushing the tomatoes with your hands and mashing them in the pan with a wooden spoon.
Add the basil, parsley and salt and pepper.
Let simmer about 15 minutes or until ready to use

Brown the ground pork and add in the herbs.

Mix the browned pork and the cheeses together 

Spoon a little of the tomato sauce into the bottoms of the crocks.

Fill each of the paccheri with the stuffing mix and stand up on end in the crocks.

Spoon the rest of the tomato sauce around and over the paccheri.

Cover the top of each crock with mozzarella, pecorino, 5 of the grape tomatoes. Sprinkle with parsley and drizzle with olive oil.

Bake at 375 for 30 - 35 minutes.

Serve as individual crocks, spooning out the stuffed paccheri on to a separate plate.