For christmas, I got the Italian kitchen "bible" - The Silverspoon - from my boyfriend, Per. This means, that I will be spending the next couple of years in the kitchen, trying out every single one of the (2000) recipes and using my friends and family as guinea pigs. I'm looking forward to their opinion, when I get to the chapter with twelve different ways of cooking sheeps brain ;) But, of course, it also contains many recipes of dishes that are more commonly recognized as human food. One of which is Cannelloni.
Now I must say, I have a hard time following recipes completely. I always seem to have an idea of how the dish should actually be made, and start adding different ingredients that I am sure will make it much better than the original (the generations of Italian Mamas, who contributed recipes to the Silverspoon might disagree - but hey! Cooking should be fun, and as long as the result is delicious, I hope that I will be forgiven). So here is my recipe for Cannelloni;
Tomato Sauce:
Olive oil (about 2 table spoons)
2 cloves of garlic
2 cans of tomatoes (really no point in buying fresh tomatoes in our part of the world this time of year. They all smell like cheese - which is really weird!)
Fresh basil (10-20 leaves, depending on the size)
Put everything into a pot and let it simmer ever so slightly for about 40 minutes. Crush the garlic cloves with your spoon, when they are tender.
Bechamel sauce:
Bechamel sauce is really the easiest thing in the world to make. You just have to have a strong forearm (which comes naturally, if you make a lot of bechamel sauce). I can't really give you the measures here - you have to play it by ear.
About 50 grams of butter
Flour
Milk
Salt
Pepper
Nutmeg
Heat up a pot and let the butter melt. Pour in som flour - just enough that it is absorbed by the butter. Let it simmer for a minute. Take the pot off the stove. Then pour in a bit of milk - maybe 1 dl. - and now you have to whip very fast. Do this until the sauce is stiff (like cookie dough), and then pour in a bit of milk again. Put it back on the stove (on a low temperature) and repeat until the sauce has the right consistency. Now it has to simmer for at least 20 minutes, until the taste of flour is gone, and all you have is a lovely creamy sauce. And you season it with salt and pepper and grind some nutmeg in. This will give it the final touch.
Pasta:
300 grams of flour
A tiny bit of salt
3 whole eggs
2 egg yolks
Pour the flour onto the kitchen table, sprinkle with salt and make a hole in the pile. The eggs and egg yolks go into the hole. Now you carefully mix it from the centre, untill you have a smooth dough. Depending on the size of the eggs, you may have to add water or more flour. Knead the dough for at least 10 minutes. It should feel smooth and moist but not sticky!!
Let it rest for an hour (cover it with a dishcloth, so it doesn't dry out on the surface).
Now you roll it on your pasta machine. If you don't have one, you can use a rolling pin, but everyone really should have a pasta machine. It is a beautiful piece of kitchen equipment! Roll it until it is about 2 millimetres thick and hang the pasta to dry for about 20 minutes. When it's ready for the next step, it should feel leathery.
Pasta drying
500 grams of ground beef
200 grams of chopped spinach
Half of the tomato sauce
Salt
Pepper
Mix it in a bowl.
When the pasta is ready, you cut it into rectangels of about 15x20 cm. Boil them two at a time in a big pot of water (add salt) for 6-7 minutes. Then place them on a moist dishcloth.
Fill the pasta with the meat filling and bechamel sauce, roll them up and place them in an ovenproof dish.
Pour on the rest of the tomato- and bechamelsauce, sprinkle with cheese and bake them in the oven at about 200 Celcius for 30-40 minutes, until they look like this:
Bon appetite!
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