Baked Shells Stuffed with Spinach and Goat Cheese

INGREDIENTS:

6 oz. (about 1/2 a box or 20 shells) jumbo pasta shells, cooked al dente

FOR FILLING:
2 tbsp. olive oil
14 oz. goat cheese
1/2 cup toasted dry breadcrumbs
2 eggs
3 cloves garlic, minced
12 oz. fresh spinach, stems removed and finely chopped
1 tbsp. dried oregano
1/2 tsp. ground nutmeg
1/2 walnuts, toasted and minced
Salt and pepper

1) Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
2) Heat the olive oil and cook garlic until it releases its aroma, about 1 minute.
3) Add spinach and saute, removing from heat when spinach is wilted and bright green, approx. 2 minutes more.
4) Stir hot spinach and garlic into goat cheese in a medium bowl--the spinach should melt the cheese enough to soften.
5) Incorporate remaining ingredients, season to taste, and set aside.

FOR SAUCE:
2 tbsp. olive oil
1 14.5 oz. can diced tomatoes
1 16 oz. can tomato sauce (for both of these, I prefer Muir Glen brand)
8 cloves garlic, chopped
1/2 tsp. red pepper flake (more if desired)
1/4 cup vodka
1 tbsp sugar
1 cup whole milk
Handful fresh basil, torn
Salt and pepper
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Boulder Beer Company Cold Hop

1) Saute garlic in the heated oil until slightly browned, about 2 minutes.
2) Add tomatoes, tomato sauce, pepper flake, sugar, and vodka.
3) Simmer the sauce while stuffing the cooked shells with the pasta filling, stirring occasionally, about 10 minutes.
4) Add milk to sauce. With a hand or standing blender, puree about half the sauce and return it to the pot.
5) Season to taste (the salt will balance the sugar), and add basil off heat.
6) Line a casserole, jelly roll pan, or baking dish with the stuffed shells. They should nestle closely. Cover with the vodka sauce.
7) Tent with tinfoil and bake for 20 minutes.
8) Open Cold Hop.
9) Enjoy together.

THE BEER:
Beers coming out of Colorado, long a bastion of the microbrew community, can tend toward the daring or the mainstream at will. This one happens to lean in the latter direction, but it's still a good beer--the combination of English-style malts and cold hops isn't nearly as daring as it might sound, but it does taste very mellow and refreshing on the palate. Not a lot of bitter hops, but the floral quality melds very nicely with the golden, full flavor profile of British malts. It's clean, it's high gravity, it's not something you necessarily want to serve with a pasta this rich, but in the end we liked the simplicity of the well-balanced brew (even though it finished rather swiftly) with the acidity and savory cream of the pasta.

THE ADVENTURE:
Moments of great alarm abounded for me during this seemingly calm Italian comfort food recipe, which I--Lyndsay--really did write myself. I was super proud that I came up with it, and then the shadows fell over the darkening world. Moments of quiet, stationary (we only have a one-bedroom apartment) panic ensued. Terrifying, soul-searching, agonizing moments like:

What if the cooked pasta sticks together?
Answer: toss it in a little olive oil, or EVOO as that Food Network gnome puts it.

What if there isn't enough stuffing for the shells??
Answer: throw some shells away. And calm DOWN. Really, what do individual shells cost? 10 cents?

What if I die from salmonella after tasting the stuffing to see if it's well seasoned???!?
Answer: how many times have you tasted raw cookie dough, you smacktarded dumbass? Also, if one were more intelligent than I am, one could taste the pre-egg confab and get a pretty damn close guess.

I hope this little Q&A settled any fears or doubts you may have about this recipe, which is really very satisfying and could serve four with a side salad, as written.

The Midnight Salad

INGREDIENTS:

1 large vine-ripe yellow tomato
6 fresh basil leaves
1 tbsp. extra virgin olive oil
1 tbsp. aged balsamic vinegar
cracked sea salt and pepper
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22 oz. He'brew Jewbelation Eleven

1) Cut tomato into bite size pieces.
2) Chiffonade the basil.
3) Drizzle olive oil and Balsamic vinegar.
4) Add sea salt and cracked black pepper to taste.
5) Open He'brew Jewbelation Eleven.
6) Enjoy together.

THE BEER: First of all, it's from He'brew, which is made in Saratoga Springs, NY and is the ale/other category of the Shmaltz Brewing Company, whose lager beers fall under the Coney Island label. It's dark, velvet chocolate with a good dose of coffee, brown sugar, vaguely smoky, not too strong on the tobacco end, with hints of fruit (primarily prune) and just a tiny trace of tar. Very meaty, strong beer, which Gabe matched with an acidic, vinegar-lightened dish. Why? It tastes delicious. The darkness of the beer was offset by the strong light tones of the salad.

THE ADVENTURE: It can be a dicey proposition, one fraught with self-recrimination and heartache, to pick a tomato when There Be Bandits About. After all, they know you want the ripe tomato. The thieves long for the same heightened flavor. They will wait until the last moment possible, just before you pick it, and abscond with your tomato. They will not look back. Except to check for other near-ripe tomatoes. Oh, sure, you could pick an unripe tomato. You could also buy hydroponically-genetically-fundamentally-spiritually altered tomatoes from the great tomato beds of Mars, and eat them after they've gone through re-entry. But why do that? One's timing must be perfect to preempt these Lawless Community Gardeners.

THE RECIPE IS GOD-AWFUL SIMPLISTIC BUT DELICIOUS: Also, it was a literally post-midnight snack. One does what one can, after all. And the tomato was begging to be picked. If I'd been a Tomato Bandit, I'd have marked it days ago as "ripe" for the "plucking."

Our departed Belgian comrade in beer drinking (he didn't die--he has merely determined to live in Belgium) left us with some lovely Delirium Tremens glasses, from which the He'brew done got drunk from when it got drunk. Forgive us. We just watched Tropic Thunder.