Mr. Oliver and His Sheets

I can't really take credit for this idea. I'll give credit where credit is due-- Jamie Oliver did it again. While watching an old episode of Oliver's Twist, Jamie made a fresh pasta dish: rolled manicotti resting in a dish of raw tomato sauce. Clean, light, and vegetarian, this dish looked delightfully simple to prepare, and was a delicious change from the standard, heavy manicotti.

It's spring now, I am awoken each morning to the cheery cacophony of birds singing their dawn chorus. Monday, I even spotted the first California grown stone fruit at the market. So manicotti, you may be asking yourself, doesn't that sound a bit heavy? A bubbly pasta dish can be a bit much to contend with, but this manicotti, is made with fresh, vine-ripened tomatoes. Baked in the oven, the tomatoes only intensify while the rest of the pasta is melting and getting gooshy.

The manicotti themselves couldn't be simpler. Fresh sheets of semolina-egg pasta, were cut into rectangles. Inside, diced onion, spinach, and marjoram, all sauteed and wilted together, with a healthy grating of spinach's best friend-- nutmeg, were used to fill the sheets of pasta, along with a dose of ricotta and a sprinkling of parmesan cheese. Each rectangle of pasta is then rolled up to make the manicotti.

A few tomatoes were blended together, skin, seeds, and all; a chiffonade of basil, salt and pepper were mixed in, and then the "sauce" was poured into the bottom of a baking dish. The sauce looks very watery when assembled, but have no fear-- upon baking, the sauce will be absorbed into the pasta, making an intense tomato sauce. I placed the manicotti in the baking dish, laid slices of fresh mozzarella cheese on top (munching on the remnants), sprinkled the dish lightly with more parmesan cheese, then set it in the oven at 425 degrees, to bake for 30 minutes.

What I retrieved from the oven a half hour later smelled divine, and tasted even better. The tomato sauce had completely incorporated into the rest of the dish; the cheeses were bubbling, with bits of ricotta peeking out of the manicotti, taunting me to dig in; and the mozzarella had turned a golden hue. Whoever said that manicotti is a stuffy, cold-weather dish, obviously hasn't hung around with Mr. Oliver lately.