The truth about MRE manicotti!!!!!
Posted: Fri Jan 04, 2008 11:59 pm
I decided to try yet another MRE entrée and having recently dined on manicotti at my favorite local Italian restaurant, I opted for a 2004 Wornick “Cheese and Vegetable Manicotti in Tomato Sauce.”
Let me preface this review by making a confession, I have long been a fan of frozen pizza. It is important to understand that I am talking store brand $ 1.99 generic frozen pizza, the cheaper the better. I do not consider a frozen pie to be an analog for pizzeria pizza; I see it as an entirely different food group unrelated except by name. Fairly or not, I am approaching this manicotti with the same generous interpretation.
Manicotti is constructed by filling a pasta tube with a ricotta cheese mixture, covering it with a tomato sauce and cheese and then baking it. I was especially interested in seeing how well Natick did in providing the interesting blend of textures present in a “good” manicotti. Most particular is the cooking of the pasta, which is to be cooked “Al Dente,” just firm enough to be resistant to the tooth. This was named, by the way, after Alphonso Dente, a shortstop for the Brooklyn Dodgers. He married an Irish woman who always over-cooked the pasta which caused him to toss her out a window. Fortunately, it was the first floor but he became famous for his insistence on a properly cooked noodle.
Let’s start with the good news, I really liked this entrée.
Here’s the bad news, until I checked pictures on the internet, I was convinced that I had somehow gotten a beef enchilada by mistake. First, the filling LOOKS and tastes like the finely ground beef used in enchiladas and not like the whitish ricotta cheese filling of a manicotti. The pasta shell was also off-color and very thick and had a distinct corn taste similar to that of an enchilada shell. The sauce was no closer to a marinara sauce than to a picante sauce.
This is where my comment about frozen pizza becomes relevant, just as a frozen pizza is not a pizza, MRE manicotti is NOT manicotti. It was, however, really tasty.
Let me preface this review by making a confession, I have long been a fan of frozen pizza. It is important to understand that I am talking store brand $ 1.99 generic frozen pizza, the cheaper the better. I do not consider a frozen pie to be an analog for pizzeria pizza; I see it as an entirely different food group unrelated except by name. Fairly or not, I am approaching this manicotti with the same generous interpretation.
Manicotti is constructed by filling a pasta tube with a ricotta cheese mixture, covering it with a tomato sauce and cheese and then baking it. I was especially interested in seeing how well Natick did in providing the interesting blend of textures present in a “good” manicotti. Most particular is the cooking of the pasta, which is to be cooked “Al Dente,” just firm enough to be resistant to the tooth. This was named, by the way, after Alphonso Dente, a shortstop for the Brooklyn Dodgers. He married an Irish woman who always over-cooked the pasta which caused him to toss her out a window. Fortunately, it was the first floor but he became famous for his insistence on a properly cooked noodle.
Let’s start with the good news, I really liked this entrée.
Here’s the bad news, until I checked pictures on the internet, I was convinced that I had somehow gotten a beef enchilada by mistake. First, the filling LOOKS and tastes like the finely ground beef used in enchiladas and not like the whitish ricotta cheese filling of a manicotti. The pasta shell was also off-color and very thick and had a distinct corn taste similar to that of an enchilada shell. The sauce was no closer to a marinara sauce than to a picante sauce.
This is where my comment about frozen pizza becomes relevant, just as a frozen pizza is not a pizza, MRE manicotti is NOT manicotti. It was, however, really tasty.
