Baked stuffed paccheri is an easy, chic, and succulent first course to prepare for Sunday lunch, holidays, Valentine’s Day, important occasions, or simply when we want to use up vegetables, sauces, or cured meats. We can use either fresh or dried pasta. I use both, but my favorite is the artisanal, rough-textured dried pasta that doesn’t let the sauce slip off. The baked stuffed paccheri in this recipe are enveloped in a creamy and flavorful milk sauce scented with pepper and nutmeg, which pair wonderfully with the eggplant-based filling. Of course, depending on what we already have at home, we can fill them in many different ways, obtaining always beautiful, rich, and delicious dishes, vegetarian or not.
- Difficulty: Very Easy
- Cost: Medium
- Preparation time: 30 Minutes
- Portions: 4
- Cooking methods: Oven
- Cuisine: Italian
- Seasonality: Autumn, Winter, and Spring, Carnival
Ingredients
- 9 oz fresh paccheri
- 1 large eggplant
- 5.3 oz smoked provola cheese
- 7 oz prosciutto crudo or pancetta
- 1 tbsp grated Parmesan cheese (generous)
- 3 cups whole milk
- to taste fine salt
- to taste nutmeg
- to taste ground pepper
- 1.4 oz all-purpose flour or cornstarch
Preparation
Wash, cut the eggplant into very small cubes, and grill them in a very hot non-stick pan without adding any seasoning.
Once the cubes are evenly grilled, transfer them to a large bowl to cool. Also add the finely chopped prosciutto crudo (cooked ham, or pancetta cubes), the provola cut into very small pieces, and mix them together.
If using dried paccheri, bring some water to a boil. Once it reaches a boil, salt it, wait for it to return to a boil, add the paccheri, and let them cook for only 5 minutes, drain them thoroughly, and place them in the baking dish. They must remain very firm, otherwise filling them becomes problematic.
Stuff the paccheri with the prepared filling, using your hands or a teaspoon, and arrange them next to each other “standing up” or laid down but without overlapping. Ideally, use a 20-centimeter springform pan.
In the meantime, let’s prepare our milk sauce. In a saucepan, heat the milk over low heat. In another saucepan, sift the cornstarch (or flour), add the fine salt, a pinch of ground pepper, nutmeg, and pour in the boiling milk all at once. Quickly mix with a steel whisk, and in a few minutes, the sauce will thicken perfectly. Turn off the heat as soon as it reaches the desired thickness.
Preheat the oven to 392°F.
Pour the hot sauce over the paccheri (this way, the cooking time will be further reduced), shake the baking dish to make sure the sauce also covers the bottom, sprinkle the pasta with grated cheese, and bake it in a medium-high position for about 15 minutes for fresh paccheri, a little longer for dried paccheri. Serve the baked stuffed paccheri hot.
