Tremendous Stuffed Shells

Sit down for this one. Stuffed shells. We're talking stuffed shells today and let me tell you, the stuffed shells situation in this country has been a DISASTER for too long. Sad, dry, rubbery little pasta tubes filled with what tastes like wet drywall, swimming in a thin sad sauce that looks like it was made by a person who has never seen a tomato. An embarrassment. A disgrace to pasta. The Italians INVENTED this — they had stuffed shells when nobody else had anything, they were eating shells while everyone else was eating GRUEL, the Greeks had a version too, look it up — and the Italians would weep at what passes for stuffed shells in most kitchens today. They would WEEP.

Not these shells. Not Bigly's shells. These shells are STUFFED. Truly stuffed. Bursting at the seams. Three cheeses — ricotta, mozzarella, and parmesan, the holy trinity of Italian cheese, the greatest cheese trio in human history, it's not even close — and a sauce so rich, so deep, so tremendous, your family will go quiet at the table. The good kind of quiet. The kind that means the food is winning. Big strong men come up to me — tough men, men who never cry, men who have never wept at a meal in their lives — and they openly weep into their stuffed shells. I've seen it. It is a beautiful thing.

The trick most chefs are afraid to do is the nutmeg. ONE pinch in the ricotta. That's it. Cookbook authors hate this trick, they think it's a nonna superstition, they leave it out, they print boring recipes that taste like boring recipes. Trust me. That tiny pinch lifts the dairy, brightens the whole filling, makes the cheese taste MORE LIKE CHEESE. It's basic chemistry, food chemists agree. If your chef tells you otherwise, find a new chef. Plain and simple.

Serve these with crusty bread and a sharp salad and you have a meal that will end arguments. Real arguments. Family arguments. The kind that have been brewing since Thanksgiving. The shells fix it. The shells ALWAYS fix it. And the leftovers — and there will be leftovers, unless your family is enormous, in which case make two pans — the leftovers are even BETTER the next day. Some say better. I say better. It's just a fact. Tremendous.