Today is the first day in my life I’m not a New Jersey resident.
Like most people from New Jersey, I love being from the Garden State. I love Bruce Springsteen and Wawa and that in South Jersey they say “wudder” and North Jersyans call capicola gabagool. I love that you can find chicken cutlets premade at ShopRite and a pork roll egg and cheese on every corner. I love the Asbury Park boardwalk and that the Jersey Devil grew up in the Pine Barrens (like me.)
As a kid, all I wanted was to escape New Jersey, move to New York City and be a writer - a practically universal desire for teenage New Jersyans. Unfortunately, I didn’t get into NYU, (actually the best financial win of my life) and when it came time to get a job, my first brought me back to NJ.
Eventually, I did find a writing career in the city, but rent really is too damn high and I joined the bridge and tunnel commuting crowd. I loved working in SoHo, grabbing drinks with coworkers after work and popping into sample sales and pop-ups on our lunch break. (I did not, however, love commuting into Penn Station.)
Mark and I bought our house in Essex County thinking this was to be our life: commuting to work five days a week, hosting our own Sunday Dinners on weekends (with cannolis from Gencarelli’s, of course.)
But, the pandemic happened. It upended everything about our day to day lives. We were stuck in a big house, unable to go out to drinks with coworkers on a random Wednesday or meet up with a friend in Brooklyn for brunch on Sunday.
As we were both working way too much and stuck at home, I began to think about an idea we floated for a minute while we were searching for our house. “What if we bought a weekend place in the Catskills instead?” I had said at the time, thinking we’d keep our apartment near the city but have a cute little escape upstate.
We ultimately decided that wasn’t going to work (we desperately wanted a dog) - and found our home just eight months before March 2020. But in the midst of being confined to our new space, we both found ourselves in need of some peace - a slower work schedule. A creek in the backyard. A walk through the forest at lunch time.
We eventually did find our “weekend” place in the Catskills, but as our realtor predicted - weekends soon stretched into four day weekends, then into weeks, then into “we’ll just stay for the whole summer.” Then, NJ started feeling less like home.
I’m writing this cuddled up on a slightly too small couch with cannoli, our St. Bernard. There is a creek in the backyard, and the rain is loud and running down the ceiling of our sunroom, but the wood stove is keeping us warm. I feel at home, despite having towers of boxes to unpack.
I also feel a little sad, or maybe sentimental, to say goodbye to NJ. I couldn’t think of a better recipe to share this week, of all weeks though. Stuffed shells are a go-to at every family function, a red sauce classic born out of Italians immigrating to places like Newark and adjusting the food they knew back home, to a new home in a new country.
It’s always on our Thanksgiving table, too.
Makes two dozen shells
For the ricotta mix:
Ingredients
1 lb whole milk ricotta cheese (Galbani’s is extra creamy.)
1 egg
1/2 cup shredded whole milk mozzarella cheese
1/4 cup Parmesan cheese
1 teaspoon dried parsley
Salt and pepper to taste
For the shells:
1 pound jumbo pasta shells
1x ricotta mix recipe (2x if you like them really stuffed!)
4 cups tomato sauce, preferably homemade
More Parmesan cheese, of course.
Directions:
1. Combine all the ingredients for the ricotta mix in a large bowl, then set aside. Preheat the oven to 350.
2. Cook the shells according to package directions, subtracting a minute or two, so the shells are just shy of al dente. Drain, then drizzle shells with olive oil to keep them from sticking together while you stuff them.
3. Coat the bottom of a 9x13 casserole dish (you might need a smaller casserole dish to act as an overflow if your 9x13 dish doesn’t fit all all the shells!) with about 1 cup sauce. Once shells are cool enough to handle, stuff each with one heaping tablespoon of ricotta mix and place in the pan. Continue until all the shells are stuffed.
4. Cover shells with the remaining sauce, then top with more Parmesan cheese.
5. Cover with aluminum foil and bake for approximately 30 minutes, until sauce is bubbling.
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