February 24, 2009 | Mama Smith

Cannelloni Break-Down

Okay, so it seems like my post worked and your bellies are all growling for some gooey cannelloni. Instead of emailing the recipe out to everyone who requested it, I thought I’d go ahead and post it here.

I will warn you, this is a bit more labor intensive (at least in the washing-multiple-pots-and-containers department) than a regular night of cooking and not very upcoming-bathing-suit-season friendly, but for a quality, go to, wow-your-guests recipe it is SO worth it.

And come on, don’t you hate pulling out that gourmet cookbook or magazine nervously choosing a delicious “sounding” recipe only to spend hours slaving away on something that ends of tasting like bland, chewy bark? Yes, I have a knack for doing that and it is super depressing/discouraging. So now I stick to word-of-mouth “proven” good recipes. And have too many cooking blog feeds to possibly get through in this century to show for it.

So get out your pad and pen and start writing, this is a long one…

Cannelloni

First, I cook my noodles to get that big ol’ boiling pot out of the way. I buy manicotti noodles to save my sanity in try to cut and wrap annoyingly small lasagna noodles, but do whatever you like. Just cook one box per the suggested time and lay the noodles out to cool while you do the rest. If you do lasagna noodles, just cut each noodle in thirds and filling with meat mixture, wrap and put in dish (MUCH more annoying that you might suspect, I say go with manicotti and cut it in half if you must).

Tomato Sauce

(This would make a great general marinara sauce to have around your kitchen. I made extra for spaghetti for the boys and ended up eating it all myself for lunch that day instead. Woops.)

4 TBSP olive oil
1 c. chopped onion
4 c. diced canned tomatoes
6 TBSP tomato paste
2 tsp dried basil
2 tsp sugar
1 tsp salt

Heat oil in a large saucepan, then add onions, cooking until soft. Add all remaining ingredients, bring to boil, then reduce heat to low, simmering for about 30-40 minutes. Use a hand-held blender (or wait until cooled and put in a food processor) and puree until smooth. Makes 3 cups worth if you’re planning on using it for something other than the cannelloni.

Meat Filling

2 TBSP olive oil
1/4 c. chopped onion
1 tsp minced garlic
1 10oz. package of frozen spinach (thawed & squeezed dry!!)
1 lb ground round beef
5 TBSP grated parm
2 TBSP whipping cream
2 eggs
1/2 tsp oregano
salt/pepper

Heat oil in skillet. Add onions and garlic, cooking until soft. Stir in spinach until all moisture is cooked away. Dump into a large mixing bowl and add the parm, cream, eggs, oregano and a little salt & pepper. Then wipe out the skillet (trust me, you DON’T want to dirty yet another pan!) and add the beef. Once the meat is done, add it to the spinach mixture. Now I had a vegetarian coming, so I went ahead and made a little extra spinach mixture and separated that into another bowl to be used for cannelloni filling. If you’re not a meat person, the spinach cannelloni tasted just as good!

Besciamella

4 TBSP butter
4TBSP flour
1 c milk
1 c whipping cream (awww yeh!)
1 tsp salt
1/8 tsp white pepper

In yet ANOTHER big saucepan, melt the butter, then remove from heat and whisk in flour. Add the milk & cream, then return medium heat stirring constantly until it starts to bubble and gets thick. It should coat the whisk pretty heavily when it’s ready. Remove from heat and season with salt & pepper.

Assembly

Instead of cooking everything and then assembling it all, I like to get the noodles stuffed and in the dish, then do the besciamella last, so it doesn’t get too thick as it cools.

So pour a little bit of the tomato sauce on the bottom of two 10×14ish baking dishes. Fill the noodles with meat filling and line up in the dish as pictured:

Then make your besciamella and pour it over the noodles. Finishing with the rest of the tomato sauce on top of that, as the picture shows. Sprinkle some parmesan cheese over the assembled noodles. You can do all this ahead of time and store the cannelloni like this in the fridge for a day, so you’re not scurrying around with a sink full of dirty pots when guests arrive. Either way, from this point you’ll bake the noodles at 375 uncovered for 20-30 minutes, until the cheese is melted and the sauce is bubbling.

This makes enough for 8-10 people…or 2 hungry adults in the case of Matthew and myself. One pan each is good for us.