Italian dishes are, and always will be my basis, The last few years I have definitely expanded my knowledge and cooked dishes like curry's, Asian food and a lot more experiments, but Italian keeps being my first love and base. But also within the Italian cuisine I keep trying new things. Once I ate this nice dish in a restaurant called cannelloni and I really wanted to try that at home as well.

Luckily I have a huge amount of recipes to search through, and I found this recipe out of a cooking magazine from years ago. This recipe requires quite some time to first properly cook the sauce, after that fill the cannelloni and lastly actually baking in the oven, but as always time also gives flavour. The time gives in this dish a beautifully balanced bolognese filling and the perfect pasta bake. The bed of spinach add some extra vegetables, freshness and colour to the plate.

Cannelloni bolognese on a bed of spinach

Difficulty Average Cooking time 90 minutes Total time 1 hr 30 minutes
Servings 4

Ingredients

Instructions

  1. Peal and dice the onions and garlic. Clean the carrot and cut finely. Rinse the thyme and shake until dry. Separate 2 twigs for garnish. Strip the leaves from the remaining twigs.

  2. Heat 1 tablespoon of oil in a big frying pan. Bake the ground meat loose in approx. 10 minutes. Season with salt and pepper. Add the carrot, garlic and half of the onion and bake for 3 minutes. Add the tomato paste and bake along shortly. Add the tinned tomatoes with the juices and press them in to chunks. Stir in the wine and the thyme. Bring the sauce to a boil and simmer for about 20 minutes.

  3. Melt for the bechamel the butter in a saucepan. Once melted add the flour and shortly bake. Stir well and add 250 ml water and the milk. Add the stock cube, bring to a boil and boil for 5 minutes. Season with salt and pepper.

  4. Clean the spinach, rinse it and let it dry. Heat 1 tablespoon of oil in a frying pan and add the leftover onion, fry until translucent. Add the spinach and let it shrink with a lid on the pan. Season with salt, pepper and nutmeg.

  5. Grate the Parmesan cheese. Cut the mozzarella in small chunks. Rinse the tomato and cut into slices. Divide 2 tablespoons of bechamel over the bottom of a greased oven dish. Spread the spinach in the dish.

  6. Preheat the oven to 200⁰C. Season the meat sauce with salt, pepper and a little bit of sugar and fill the cannelloni with the sauce. Place the cannelloni on top of the spinach. Pour over the remaining bechamel sauce. Divide the tomato on top and sprinkle over the cheese. Bake the dish for 40 minutes in the oven. Garnish with the leftover thyme.

Note

Source and inspiration: koken&genieten, april 2014

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