Giada's Stuffed Shells

Giada is clearly the best Food Network star. It's hard to not be charmed by her bobble head and ubiquitous cleavage. So much better than Rachel Ray, who has the audacity to make asian noodle soup with semolina spaghetti pasta. The horror! And I don't even want to get into her "chowda mac" and "stoup". On one of her shows, Giada made Stuffed Shells with Turkey and Artichoke. It looked really good and relatively easy. I generally don't like stuffed shells because there's usually so much ricotta cheese, I can only take a few bites before feeling full...but not in a good way. Her stuffed shells are really delicious, the recipe calls for ricotta cheese, but it still tastes light and healthy. Another great thing is that you can make a whole batch, freeze the ones you don't finish and eat them for a month! You just pop the frozen ones in the oven for 45 min - 1 hour, and dinner is done.

Here's the recipe (Giada made her own sauce, but I used a jar of 365 brand marinara sauce and it tasted just fine)

Ingredients:
1 box of jumbo shells
1 pound ground turkey
1 package frozen artichokes, thawed and chopped
1 (15 ounce) container of ricotta cheese
2 eggs, beaten
1/4 cup of chopped basil
handful of chopped parsley
3/4 cup grated parmesan
1 cup grated mozzarella
1 smal onion, diced
2 cloves of garlic, chopped
olive oil
salt
pepper
1 jar of marinara sauce

Instructions:
- Preheat oven at 400 degrees
- Boil the shells in water for 5 minutes
- Sautee the chopped garlic and diced onion for a few minutes, add ground turkey, salt and pepper and sautee for another few minutes. Make sure the ground turkey is broken into small pieces
- Add the chopped artichokes and sautee for another 5 minutes, or until the turkey is cooked on the outside.
- In a large bowl, mix the cooked turkey and artichoke combination with with the chopped parsley, basil, 2 eggs, ricotta cheese (almost the entire container) and parmesan cheese together.
- After everything is evenly mixed together, start stuffing the shells with the mixture. Stuff the shells up to the top, it's ok if it's messy and there's stuff coming out of the top.
Cover the bottom of a baking pan with a layer of marinara sauce, put the stuffed shells on top of the sauce, cover the top of the shells with another thick layer of sauce, top it off with shredded mozzarella
- Bake at 400 degrees for 30 - 40 minutes, until the shells are soft

For you vegetarians, you can substitute the turkey with mushrooms, or just add more artichokes. It tastes really good, ask Nikki! It's not too heavy, and goes wonderfully with a salad and glass of white wine.