Is it Cheating?

I think I am a transcendentalist at heart. The words of Emerson, Thoreau, Whitman, and Dickinson soothe my soul and reverberate through my thoughts. Why then would I question taking a simple, direct route to a cooking goal? Perhaps (my mind says) the easier route does not precipitate the best results. Perhaps it is merely the path of least resistance rather than the path of simplicity. For whatever reasons I might contemplate deep in my inner psyche, I could never bring myself to use the no-boil method of making manicotti - until today.

Apparently I have spent decades laboring under the misconception that manicotti shells need to be boiled before being stuffed. However, today's results proved me wrong and removed an obstacle from one of my son's favorite dishes. Traditionally, the most difficult aspect of making manicotti is stuffing the shells without tearing them which generally requires them to be cooked to an exact point I have never mastered, even though I time the pasta quite carefully. (In addition, this time consuming since the pasta has to cook and cool before being stuffed.) Obviously, this is the only remotely tricky part of the process since the filling is just a mixture of cheeses and spices and the sauce is up to individual taste. (I'll admit that I have made the sauce from scratch a time or two, but mostly I use the kind in a jar. My favorite flavor is sun-dried tomato.) Thus, once having to stuff the pasta post-cooking is removed from the equation, everything becomes simple. What could be easier than spooning filling into rigid, cool pasta tubes?

Of course the trick is to add water to the sauce so the pasta cooks in the oven. I also use more sauce than the recipe actually calls for since I like everything to be nice an moist. (The directions on the box specify a smaller amount of sauce than the size of a standard jar, so that always works out for me.) Ultimately, the manicotti was delicious - perhaps even better using this method since the pasta didn't fall apart during stuffing or baking. Obviously, this isn't a quick fix dish since it requires a good deal of oven time, but the no-boil method makes the preparation much faster and easier which translates into having this for dinner more often. When coupled with a tossed salad and some frozen bread sticks, this is the kind of meal that pleases the entire family - even the closet transcendentalists.