Every Friday night I show my daughter how to cook a meal. It is a bit of mother-daughter time (although at times she thinks I am making her work), but also I am hoping it is giving her some skills she can use in the future. Last night it was cannelloni. A favourite in our house and a dish that use to take me ages to do, until I figured out a few tricks to speed up the process. I’m sure I am not the only one who use to be slicing/chopping and squeezing spinach, making up a tomato sauce and having problems filling the tubes. So I thought I should share my version of cannelloni, to give you more time to do other things in your life.
This recipe feeds my family of four and could possibly feed six, but I have two hungry men in my household. Also, I add sweet potato to this dish to include another vegetable, but also it’s flavour goes really well with the spinach and ricotta.
Ingredients
120g Spinach, washed
2 small sweet potatoes or 1 large sweet potato
2 x 400g tubs of Ricotta
2 cloves garlic
Approx. 40 Cannelloni tubes
Passata (Tomato purée)
1 teaspoon dried basil
1 cup grated Cheddar Cheese
You will need:
Peeler
Knife
Chopping board
Tablespoon or wooden spoon
Vegetable chopper or food processor
Piping bag
Baking dish (28cm x 32cm)
Instructions:
With a vegetable chopper or food processor, chop up your spinach. Place in a large bowl.
Peel your sweet potato and roughly chop into large chunks before placing into a vegetable chopper or food processor to chop finely. Add to the spinach.
Open your ricotta. If there is some liquid on top, pour off into the sink as we don’t want the mixture too watery.
Crush the garlic and along with the ricotta mixture, add to the sweet potato and spinach.
Flavour with salt and pepper. Mix all the ingredients together in the bowl until even.
Pour 2 – 3 tablespoons of the passata onto the base of the baking dish. Make sure this is evenly spread over the base of the dish.
Using a piping bag, add the ricotta mixture and pipe into the cannelloni tubes. Place them side by side, covering the bottom of the dish. Once the base is full, layer on the top until you run out of the ricotta mixture.
Pour the passata sauce evenly over the top of all the cannelloni. As I like to ensure the cannelloni gets cooked evenly. I rinse out the passata jar with half a cup of water and pour over the tray of cannelloni. Use a spoon to spread evenly.
Sprinkle with the basil.
Cover the dish with aluminium foil and place into the oven at 180C fan-forced.
After 20 minutes, remove the foil and sprinkle the grated cheese evenly over the cannelloni.
Bake for a further 10 minutes until golden and until a knife cuts through a cannelloni tubes easily.
Enjoy!
Note: Pumpkin works just as well as sweet potato.
Have an earthly passionate time doing this.
Attracta & the team