This week heralded a week of pumpkins featuring both a savory and a sweet recipe option. As it should! Eating local and in season gives a bump in stimulating the local farming economy and its also just being plain healthy. Keeping it simple and unprocessed as often as we can.
So to end out the punkin’ posts I’ll leave you with this tasty ditty of a recipe featuring my favorite orange orb all mashed up in my Pumpkin Manicotti. I know! Will I ever get tired of pumpkin and sage together? Bear with me friends because it’s highly doubtful.
Pumpkin Manicotti
Ingredients
- 1 8 ounce package manicotti noodles
- 3 cups milk
- 2 cloves garlic
- 1 tablespoon olive oil
- 8 tablespoons 1 stick butter, divided
- 1/8 cup fresh sage leaves thinly sliced
- ¼ cup flour
- 1 1/2 cup Ricotta cheese
- 1 cup pumpkin puree
- 1 egg
- 1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
- 1 ½ teaspoon salt divided
- 1 cup Mozzarella cheese shredded
- 1/2 cup Parmesan cheese grated
Instructions
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Preheat oven at 350°F. Bring a large stock pot of water to boil. Once water comes to boil, add oil and salt water well and cook noodles for 5-8 minutes or until al dente. Drain and rinse noodles and set aside.
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In a saucepan, bring milk to a boil, lower to simmer and add garlic. Simmer for 15 minutes until garlic flavor infuses milk. Remove garlic from mixture and discard.
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In a separate small saucepan, melt 2 tablespoons butter, add sage leaves and cook until crisp. Remove sage leaves from butter pan to drain and set aside. Add 6 tablespoons butter to remaining sage butter in pan, and melt over medium heat. Whisk in flour and cook for 2 minutes. Add reserved garlic-infused milk mixture and cook until thickened, about 10 minutes, whisking so sauce does not stick or burn. Season with ½ teaspoon salt, remove from heat and let cool.
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Layer a 13 X 9 inch pan with 1/2 cup of sauce.
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In a large bowl, mix Ricotta, pumpkin puree, egg, nutmeg and salt. Add ½ cup Mozzarella and mix. Fill a large Ziploc freezer bag with pumpkin mixture, clip one corner with a ¼” cut and pipe manicotti tubes with Ricotta cheese mixture so a little bit overflows on ends.
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Place manicotti tubes side by side in pan, repeating until you run out of shells and filling. Spoon remaining sauce on top of shells, top with remaining Mozzarella and Parmesan cheese. Sprinkle sage leaves on top of cheese, cover with foil and bake for 30 minutes, remove foil and bake for another 10 minutes.
continue to the recipe… about Friday Faves and Pumpkin Manicotti
