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Cauliflower Ricotta Stuffed Shells from Nom Yourself: Simple Vegan Cooking
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4.54 from 13 votes

Cauliflower Ricotta Stuffed Shells from Nom Yourself: Simple Vegan Cooking + A Cookbook Giveaway!

Cauliflower has to be one of the most versatile vegetables out there. You can fry it, blend it, bake it, sauté it, boil it (if you want your whole house to smell like cauliflower), and I’m sure there are some preparations I’m leaving out. Cauliflower also makes one hell of a ricotta-like filling for baked stuffed pasta shells. If you’re not a huge stuffed-shells fan, just replace this pasta with some ziti and make some baked ziti instead. Remember, this is your kitchen. I’m just living on the shelf in it.
Course: Pasta
Servings: 20 shells
Author: Mary Mattern | Nom Yourself: Simple Vegan Cookign

Ingredients

  • 1 large head of cauliflower, chopped
  • 2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
  • ¼ cup nutritional yeast
  • ½ cup unsweetened almond milk
  • 2 teaspoons garlic powder
  • 1 teaspoon onion powder
  • 1 bunch of fresh flat-leaf parsley, chopped (I used a ½ bunch of parsley)
  • 2 pinches of sea salt (I used several)
  • 1 (12-ounce) jar tomato sauce, or 1½ cups homemade tomato sauce
  • 1 (12-ounce) package jumbo shells, cooked to al dente and drained

Instructions

  • Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F.
  • In the bowl of a blender**, blend the cauliflower, olive oil, nutritional yeast, almond milk, garlic powder, onion powder, parsley, and sea salt. Don’t overblend. You want to eliminate big chunks of cauliflower, but you still want a coarse consistency.
  • Spread the tomato sauce on the bottom of an 8 x 8-inch glass baking dish.
  • Stuff the shells with the cauliflower mixture, arrange them in the baking dish, and pour the remaining sauce on top of the shells.
  • Bake for 15 minutes. Add some fresh basil and vegan Parmesan cheese on top if you have it! If you don’t have shells, you can also use manicotti, or use the cauliflower ricotta for lasagna.

Notes

*I find cauliflower to have a pungent, overpowering taste unless it's cooked for quite some time, so I sautéed the cauliflower ricotta mixture in a large skillet for 10 to 12 minutes prior to stuffing and baking the shells. This helped soften the cauliflower flavor and meld the seasonings.
**I find that a food processor works better than a blender, so I recommend you use the same unless you have a high-powered blender.
Reprinted from Nom Yourself by arrangement with Avery Books, a member of Penguin Group (USA) LLC, A Penguin Random House Company. Copyright © 2015, Mary Mattern