Paccheri Ripieni with Mozzarella and Ricotta

Ingredients:

I watched Iron Chef America - S01E08 - Batali vs Campbell - Battle Cheese and became so totally enamored of the dishes that Mario Batali produced that I became obsessed with duplicating them. Specifically his "Paccheri Ripieni Ripieni with Mozzarella and Ricotta" dish. I watched the episode salivating wildly, then I watched it again, writing down every scrap of information I could get for this dish.

Mario basically sauteed some peas and prosciutto together, mixed it with ricotta and mozzarella, stuffed some pasta tubes, poured bechamel over it all and topped it with parmesan before baking it. This is my attempt at creating something similar.

Some quickie definitions I had to look up:
Pacchari: a type of tube pasta
Ripieni: Italian word for filling

I am using Manicotti instead and I am also using a bigger dish to bake it in.

I boiled the manicotti

Step 1:

Then I took half of this sausage left over from grilling the other day, and took all the skin off, and chopped it up.

Step 2:

Then I threw it in a pan with some chopped up onions and some peas and sweated them with some salt and pepper.

Step 3:

I threw in some fresh homegrown basil right at the end and then it was into the fridge to cool down.

Step 4:

My husband made a beautiful bechamel sauce while I grated up some mozzarella and some parmesan cheeses.

Step 5:

Grated cheeses:

Step 6:

When the pea-onion-sausage mixture had cooled down enough, we added ricotta and mozzarella to it and stuffed the manicotti tubes.

Step 7:

Stuffed manicotti tubes.

Step 8:

Then I poured bechamel all over it and topped it with a bunch of freshly grated parmesan.

Step 9:

Then we baked it at 350*F for 20 minutes because that seemed like a good idea and is pretty standard. Then I stuck it under the broiler for 2 minutes, but we were listening to loud music and I didn't hear the beep, so it went for 3 minutes which led to a little extra browness. But it still looks yum.

Step 10:

We had to wait the longest few minutes of my life until it had stopped bubbling and we could serve it without it running everywhere.

Oh man, it was delicious. It was like eating heaven. I would definitely make it again but perhaps try to make it less rich, although I'm not sure how.