The first time I ate cannelloni was on a very hot day in Pisa, right around the corner of the leaning tower of Pisa. Everytime I eat cannelloni, it feels like I’m back in Pisa. So this is a good tip for a rainy day; just close your curtains and dream about a dinner in Italy.
Ingredients for 4 pers.:
- 200 gr pasta flour
- 2 eggs
- 300 gr spinach
- 250 gr ricotta cheese
- 1 handful of pine nuts
- 500 ml passata di pomodori
- 1 clove of garlic
- 1 table spoon of flour
- 150 ml milk
- butter
- salt and pepper
How to prepare it:
Preheat the oven at 200 degrees.
As with all the pasta dishes that I post, you have got the option to use dried, ready to go pasta or you can make the pasta yourself. For this dish you can buy cannelloni pipes, which you can fill.
If you are making fresh pasta, start with that. Take 200 gr of pasta flour and mix this (in you food processor) with 2 eggs and a dash of salt. Once the dough is becoming a nice boll, you put the dough in a bowl in the fridge.
Chop the spinach into smaller pieces. Put a frying pan on the stove. Add some olive oil and bake the spinach once the oil is hot. It might look as if the spinach is way too much but remember that the spinach will compress immensely. Once all the spinach is compressed, add the ricotta, some pepper and the pine nuts. Stir well whilst heating up the filling. Once it’s hot enough, take it off the stove.
Continue with making the cannelloni. Make sure your countertop is clean and dry to roll out the pasta dough. Cover your countertop with some flour and roll out the pasta dough until you can cut it into pieces that fit into the pasta machine.
Pull the pasta sleeves approx.. 3 times through the pasta machine. Since we are using pasta leaves, there is no need to cut them further with the pasta machine. Cut the sleeves into the right rectangular shape. Put the sleeves onto a board so you can easily fill them. Take a spoon of the filling and fill up the cannelloni’s. Make sure that you keep the edges free so that you can easily roll them up.
Take an oven dish and grease the dish with some oil or butter so the cannelloni’s won’t stick to it. Put the filled cannelloni’s next to each other into the dish.
Put the passata in a bowl. Peel off the skin of the garlic, take out the root and squeeze out the garlic into the tomato sauce. Add some pepper and stir well. Pour the sauce on top of the cannelloni.
Put a small saucepan on the stove. Add a good amount of butter. Once the butter is hot, add the flour and start stirring. Everything will go quickly from now. The flour will start to clod together. Poor the milk in small batches into the pan whilst you are stirring and make sure that you take out all the clods. After a while, by adding more milk, a smooth white sauce will start to exist. If needed you can add some extra milk. Also add some fresh black pepper.
Pour the white sauce on top of the tomato sauce. Put the cannelloni into the oven for 30 min.
Enjoy!
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