Pre-heat oven to 350. Line a baking sheet with tin foil. Pierce the bottom “nub” of the butternut squash and let bake for 40 minutes in preheated oven. The pierce helps release some steam from the squash!

While the squash bakes, do other prep work: chop and mince onion and garlic, de-stem the kale and cut or shred the leaves into smaller pieces, and chop the sage. Make the ricotta mixture: combine the ricotta, grated parmesan, chopped sage, 2 pinches of Kosher salt and a little black pepper in a mixing bowl and stir all together. Transfer ricotta mixture to a gallon ziplock bag or pastry bag and place in the refrigerator until it’s time to stuff the shells.

When the squash is done baking, remove from the oven and let cool for 5-10 minutes. After cooling, use a large knife and cut in in half. Remove seedy part with a spoon, and scrape soft squash down to the skin out and into a bowl. Mash well with a fork to break up any chunks. Some chunks are fine! It works fine in this dish, but the smoothest you can get it the better. You’ll need about 2 cups of smashed squash - a little less is fine.

This dish does best with a cast iron skillet that you can transfer from the stovetop to the oven. Any pan that can do this is perfect. Don’t have one? Don’t worry - just make the “sauce” in any skillet and transfer to a 9x13 baking dish before putting the shells into the sauce mixture.

Heat up a skillet over medium heat. Add in 1 tbsp. of the olive oil and sauté the diced onion and minced garlic for about 2 minutes before adding the pieces of kale. Pour additional 1 tbsp. of olive oil over the kale, and stir until it’s bright and mostly wilted. Add a few pinches of Kosher salt to the kale mix.

Add the smashed butternut squash and 2 cups of warm water, and stir until the squash is almost like a chunky sauce. Add the cup of cream and continue to stir to fully mix. Bring heat to medium high to let aggressively simmer for about 3 minutes, then reduce temperature down to low. Turn completely off if your stovetop runs hot, or if it won’t stop simmering while you’re stuffing the shells.

Scoop out about a cup of the liquid, leaving the kale in the skillet and not part of this extra liquid. Set aside.

Pre-heat the oven to 375.

Take the bag of ricotta mixture out of the refrigerator. Cut a small hole in the corner where you can squeeze the ricotta out into the shells. Take a raw pasta shell, fill it with ricotta, and gently wiggle it down into the sauce and kale mixture in the skillet. Do this will all of the shells, placing them right up against one another, nestled into the skillet, until the skillet is full. You can even squeeze some shells on top of one another if you need to. Load it up!

Turn off the stove top, pour the extra cup of sauce set aside over the shells (ok if it doesn’t completely cover them) and cover the shells with the shredded mozzarella and shredded gouda cheese. Place entire skillet into the oven and bake for 35 minutes.

Plating: Roughly chop up some parsley and sprinkle on entire skillet when it comes out. Serve stuffed shells warm!