[Swee San was formerly one-third of the group food blog Just Heavenly (whose excellent and popular recipe for Portuguese Egg Tarts we featured earlier in the year) and has now opened her own cooking blog, where she continues to post recipes and make cooking seem fun and exciting.]

Except that it’s not Cannelloni, it’s lasagne sheet rolled into a shape like Cannelloni.

I had some ricotta cheese leftover from the Ricotta Hotcakes I made before. So I was browsing through if I could make anything with the ricotta. So, I recalled that there’s a ricotta spinach recipe in Jamie Oliver’s Jamies Dinner. And then, my dinner is being sorted out.

Hrm, the photo turned out surprisingly well. Heh.

Recipe from Jamie’s Dinners (Serves 4)

2 knobs of butter
olive oil
2 cloves garlic, peeled and finely sliced
a large handful of fresh majoram or oregano, roughly chopped
1/2 of a nutmeg, grated
8 large handful of spinach, thoroughly washed
a handful of fresh basil, stalks chopped, leaves ripped
2 x 400g tins of good quality plum tomatoes, chopped
sea salt and ground black pepper
a pinch of sugar
400g crumbly ricotta cheese
2 handfuls of freshly grated Parmesan Cheese
16 cannelloni tubes
200g mozzarella, broken up

For white sauce
1 x 500ml tub of creme fraiche
3 anchovies, finely chopped
2 handfuls of freshly grated Parmesan Cheese

WOW, thats’ one heck load of ingredients. Tell you what, my version would be like this …

2 knobs of butter
olive oil
2 cloves garlic, peeled and finely sliced
a large handful of fresh majoram or oregano, roughly chopped
1/2 of a nutmeg, grated
8 large handful of spinach, thoroughly washed *frozen spinach used*
a handful of fresh basil, stalks chopped, leaves ripped
2 x 400g tins of good quality plum tomatoes, chopped
sea salt and ground black pepper
a pinch of sugar
400g crumbly ricotta cheese
2 handfuls of freshly grated Parmesan Cheese
16 cannelloni tubes *lasagne sheet rolled like cannelloni*
200g mozzarella, broken up

For white sauce
1 x 500ml tub of creme fraiche
3 anchovies, finely chopped
2 handfuls of freshly grated Parmesan Cheese
instant cheese sauce

Preheat oven to 180 C. Boil water with some salt, add in lasagne sheet and boil for about 8 minutes. Remove from water when done and just drain it with cold water to stop the cooking. Heat pan with oil then add in one of the garlic cloves and majoram or oregano. When garlic is soft, add in spinach. In my case, I used frozen spinach. So I just thawed it in the microwave for a couple of minutes, then stir into the garlic & oregano on the pan. Leave to cool. Then make the tomato base sauce as you wish. For me, heat the pan with oil and garlic, added in tomato paste and water, some pepper and oregano as well. If you wanna add basil, go ahead. While the sauce is cooking, make the ricotta spinach mixture.

Add in ricotta to the spinach with some parmesan. Make sure that the spinach doesnt have excess water. If you cook from fresh spinach, there might be some moisture that you need to squeeze out. So, mix everthing. Then use a piping bag to squeeze into the cannelloni. In my case, I rolled the ricotta spinach mixture in the lasagne. Then, put into the baking tray. Pour the tomato sauce over it.

For the white sauce, Jamie’s way, mix together creme fraiche, anchovies and 2 handfuls of Parmesan with a little salt and pepper, then loosen with a little water until you can spoon it over cannelloni. My way, well, I used a instant cheese sauce where I just added milk and water and boiled to thickening consistency. Then pour into the baking tray, spinkle some Parmesan and Mozzarella and bake for about 20-25 minutes until golden and bubbling.

Bon apetit