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Recipe - Ricotta and Spinach Cannelloni

by Erica Green

NOTE: Print this Page for easy reference when cooking.

 
Cannelloni is one of the top few dishes that come to mind when you think baked Italian.  I think that I even prefer cannelloni to lasagne.  It is quicker to make (no faffing around with béchamel) and you still get all the comfort feelings that only baked pasta can give.

 
Ingredients

Serves 4 as main or 8 as a starter

• 1 onion, finely chopped
• 1Tsp. garlic paste
• 1 Tbsp. olive oil
• 125g frozen spinach, defrosted
• 500g fresh ricotta
• 250g grated cheddar cheese
• 1/8 Tsp. ground nutmeg
• Salt ( 1/4 Tsp.)  and pepper to taste
• 375g "San Remo" (8) fresh lasagne sheets
• 600g (1 1/2 400g bottles) "Mutti" brand gourmet pasta sauce rossoro tomatoes with genovese basil

 
Method

• Preheat oven to 180°C.
• Sauté onions and garlic in the oil. 
• Squeeze the spinach through a clean chux cloth to remove most of the water.
• Mix together the sautéed onion and garlic mix, spinach, ricotta, 2/3 of the grated cheddar, nutmeg, salt and pepper.
• Cut 1/3 off the short end of each lasagna sheets and set aside for some other use.  Evenly distribute the spinach mixture across the short side of each (8) lasagna sheet and roll up.
• Spread 200g of the pasta sauce over the base of a lasagna dish. Arrange the tubes in a row. Cover with the remaining pasta sauce.  Make sure that all pasta edges are covered.
• Sprinkle over with the remaining cheese.
• Bake for 40 minutes or until golden.

About the Recipe

• This recipe is suitable for vegetarians.
• A note on ricotta.  Fresh ricotta is not the same as the smooth ricotta that you can buy in tubs in the supermarket chiller. Smooth ricotta is much wetter than fresh.   The fresh ricotta that we are needing for this recipe, comes packaged in a strainer and can be bought in the chiller section in some supermarkets and in the delicatessen section of other supermarkets.
• I use fresh lasagne sheets to roll the cannelloni rather than the dry tubes.  Firstly, it is so much easier to roll rather than to stuff and secondly, when you get the packet of dried tubes home, it always seemed that half of them are broken.  You can buy fresh cannelloni sheets, which are about 1/3 the size of the standard lasagne sheets.  I find them a little bit too small. 
• This is a replacement recipe for one that has been previously published, as one of the ingredients in that recipe is no longer available.

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