La vie est belle

I have never had a cannelloni dish before. I didn’t even know what ricotta cheese tasted like. I had a box of empty cannelloni shells which I brought back from Oz and yesterday I decided to use them. We had family dinner at my place. I made baked cannelloni stuffed with spinach and ricotta + cottage cheese.

I didn’t have enough cannelloni shells, so I used cooked lasagna sheets to fill the empty spaces. That’s why a quarter of the dish looks different.

I went to Cold Storage to get the ricotta cheese and the rest of the stuffs. Now, why is this cheese more expensive than others (except Mascarpone cheese)? It costs almost $9 for a 250g tub. I needed 2 tubs. I wanted a full fat and a low fat version but the low fat version was out of stock. So I used a ricotta cheese substitute i.e cottage cheese – low fat cottage cheese.

It was quite easy to prepare.  Did I mention about the 4 type of cheeses that this dish has? Ricotta, cottage, cheddar, parmesan and mozzarella!

Layer 1: Basil tomato sauce

The spinach and cheese mixture

The white sauce

Layer 2: Filled cannelloni shells

Layer 3 and 4: White sauce topped with shredded mozzarella cheese

The end product!

Here’s the recipe. Adapted from Jamie Oliver’s awesome spinach and ricotta cannelloni.

Ingredients (serves 5-6)

• 2 knobs of butter
• olive oil
• 2 cloves of garlic, peeled and finely sliced
• a large handful of fresh marjoram or oregano, roughly chopped – I used 1 to 1.5 tsp of dried oregano
• ¼ of a nutmeg, grated – I used 1 to 1.5 tsp dried nutmeg
• 8 large handfuls of spinach, thoroughly washed – I used 5 packets of china baby spinach with stalks removed – actually you could also chop the stalks into tiny pieces instead of wasting them!
  
• a handful of fresh basil, stalks chopped, leaves ripped
• 2 x 400g tins of good-quality plum tomatoes, chopped – I used Hunts stewed & diced tomatoes
• sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
• 2 pinches of sugar
• 400g crumbly ricotta cheese – I used 250g ricotta cheese + 250g low fat cottage cheese
• 2 handfuls of freshly grated Parmesan cheese
• 16 cannelloni tubes – and about 5 extra cooked lasagna sheets
• 200g mozzarella, broken up

For the white sauce

• 1 x 500ml tub of crème fraîche
• 3 anchovies, finely chopped
• 2 handfuls of freshly grated Parmesan cheese

Note: I made my own white sauce version using butter, flour, milk, salt, pepper, some cheddar cheese and nutmeg …

Method

1. In a large saucepan, put it on a high heat and add your butter, a drizzle of olive oil, one of the sliced garlic cloves, a handful of marjoram or oregano (or dried oregano) and the grated nutmeg. By the time the pan is hot the garlic should be soft. Put as much spinach as will fit into the pan. Keep turning it over; it will wilt quickly so you will be able to keep adding more spinach until it’s all in. Moisture will cook out of the spinach, which is fine. By cooking it this way you don’t lose any of the nutrients that you would if boiling it in water. After 5 minutes, put the spinach into a large bowl and leave to cool.
2. Place the pan back on the heat, add a little olive oil, the other clove of sliced garlic, your basil stalks and the tomatoes. Then fill one of the empty tomato tins with cold water and add this too. If using stewed tomatoes, do not add this extra water. Bring to the boil, then turn the heat down, add a pinch of salt and pepper and the sugar, and simmer for about 10 minutes, until you get a loose tomato sauce consistency. Then take the pan off the heat and add the basil leaves.
3. By now the spinach will have cooled down, so squeeze any excess liquid out of it and pour this back into the bowl. Finely chop the spinach and put it back into the bowl. Mix it with the liquid, add the ricotta (or ricotta + cottage cheese) and a handful of the Parmesan, and then squeeze the mixture into the cannelloni. You can use a piping bag to do that if you want.
4. Pour the tomato sauce into your ovenproof dish and lay the cannelloni on top.
5. To make the white sauce, mix together the crème fraîche, anchovies and the 2 handfuls of Parmesan with a little salt and pepper, then loosen with a little water .
6. Spoon in the white sauce over the cannelloni. Sprinkle with the remaining Parmesan and the mozzarella pieces, and bake for about 20 to 25 minutes until golden and bubbling.

Ready to bake

Tags: baking, Food

This entry was posted on Sunday, November 22nd, 2009 at 1:39 pm and is filed under Food, Recipes. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.