Cannelloni is an Italian famous dish, often made of tubular pasta stuffed with meat, tomatoes and cheese, then cooked in tomato sauce. Here’s a more vegetarian version of it with ricotta and spinach, to which I’ve added a lot of lemon zest and grounded nutmeg to add more flavours. Don’t forget that ricotta is quite tasteless. I’ve used ricotta du bufala that I found more digestible but if you can’t find any, take the classic one made of cow milk. I also took gluten-free lasagna. They are quite hard to find but I use the Schär brand which you can find in organic stores and some regular supermarkets. Ingredients:
- 8 gluten-free lasagna sheets
- 400g ricotta di bufala (or the classic one)
- 250g cleaned, organic and fresh spinach leaves
- 2 yolks
- 500g plain organic tomato sauce
- 1 tsp grounded nutmeg
- 1 tsp salt and pepper
- the zest of one lemon
- 1 cup grated parmesan and some more to serve
Recipe:
- In a blender, mix the spinach leaves; set aside
- In bowl, mix the ricotta, the spinach, the yolks, the lemon zest, the grounded nutmeg and the salt and pepper
- Cook the lasagna in boiling salted water. You need to cook them nearly ‘al dente’ so you can roll them but not too much or they will break during the stuffing process
- Preheat your oven to 300°F
- Drain the pasta and separate quickly the sheets so they do not stick to one another
- Cut them lenghtwise with a pair of scissors
- On each pasta, spread some of the mixture. Do not hesitate to overload each tube with a lot of ricotta/ spinach mix
- Place each stuffed lasagna in an oven dish filled up with tomato sauce. Place the lasagna with the stuffing facing upwards (see photo) leaving some space between each roll
- Sprinkle with some grated parmesan
- Place the pan in the oven and let the pasta cook till their top is golden. You can finish by few seconds under the broil mode so the parmesan is well grilled
- Serve hot with some more parmesan
Enjoy!