Meat cannelloni

How to prepare meat cannelloni .

” Italian pasta as passion ” This would be a phrase worth tattooing on my arm and it is that as you can see lately Italian cuisine is hitting me hard.

I have several pasta recipes in the bedroom about Italy and its gastronomy that little by little you will see published.

A long time ago I presented you my baked lasagna and today I publish a similar one in its preparation but different for its mixture.

Knowing how to combine a pasta with an appetizing sauce is little less than a science. My point of view on Italian recipes can be very personal since I am not Italian and sometimes reinterpreted the dish according to my tastes.

Dry pasta lacks its own distinctive flavor and is highly dependent on the sauce or filling that goes with it.

The cannelloni are the ones that allow the most sauce and filling because their “interior gap” is larger. The quality of the ingredients is very important and the bechamel has its point, it comes out perfect with the steps that I present.

To give it an authentic Italian touch we have prepared this recipe with Garofalo’s Cannelloni , which give such good results, guaranteed quality.

These cannelloni admit all kinds of fillings and formulas: fish , paté (like Pilar’s which are a classic on Saturdays), spinach and ham , meat and mushrooms, tuna and tomato, Galician style (from shoulder with turnip greens) ) or these same minced meat with an Italian sauce.

I encourage you to improvise with the fillings since one of the best I’ve prepared has never been with Galician xarrete , too bad I don’t have a photo but I’ll prepare them another day and I’ll leave you the recipe. In the meantime I hope you enjoy these cannelloni ripieni.

Preparation of tomato sauce and minced meat

1. We wash all the vegetables to use very well, we dry.
2. We chop the celery, onion and carrot very finely. Sauté in a saucepan with virgin olive oil before adding the chopped livers, meat and ham.
3. Season with salt and pepper and simmer for an hour, occasionally adding a little meat stock.
4. We peel and remove the seeds from the tomatoes, we pass them through the mash. I am using the whole peeled tomatoes from the pot and the sauce is very good. I leave you the 2 options, try and then you tell me.
5. Add to the stew, adjust the salt point and leave to simmer for about 40-45 minutes. When the stew has reduced, remove and let cool before filling the cannelloni.

Preparation of the béchamel sauce for the cannelloni

1. We sift the flour with a strainer. This step is very important so that later no lumps occur.
2. We put the milk in a saucepan to heat over medium heat for 4-5 minutes without boiling it. This step is to then speed up the sauce preparation process.
3. In another saucepan we introduce the butter and heat it over low heat until it melts, it has to turn a hazelnut color and it will remove a little foam that we can remove if we want.
4. Then we add the sifted flour (Roux, is the name of this step or mixture of flour and butter, which will help us bind the bechamel, it is not only used in this sauce but in many others) and we let it mix until they form small masses of golden hue.
5. This is very important because if the flour is raw, the bechamel will taste a lot like flour and it is not what we want.
6. In the previous step I used butter, but if we want we can use butter and olive oil to equal measures. The oil gives it a special touch. You can try to see if you like it.
7. Mix the flour with the butter very well with a wooden spoon until it is like a ball.
8. We pour the hot milk into the saucepan with the flour and butter. Add salt, pepper to taste and a little ground nutmeg.
9. Stir continuously with a rod (5-6 minutes). We are controlling the temperature, in this step it is best to leave it to a minimum.
10. There will be a homogeneous mixture and most importantly, without lumps.
11. For this recipe we need a light béchamel sauce , so if we see that it is very dense we add a little more milk and fix it with a touch of a mixer. So it will be perfect and very light.

Cannelloni stuffing

1. The first step is to have the sauce ready before the pasta touches the water. The tomato and meat sauce should wait for the cannelloni and not the other way around. Also, as we said, it has to cool, so perfect.
2. In a saucepan, heat one liter of water for every 80 g of cannelloni. These proportions, which are normally indicated on the packaging, help the cannelloni not stick together.
3. And always try to use a large casserole, the largest in your kitchen. If you cook pasta many times it will be very useful to buy a casserole for those occasions, a good investment.
4. In this specific case I have used 2 packages of cannelloni, each one has 12 and in the end I have used 18, but you can cook them all and so the pasta enthusiasts who repeat.
5. When it begins to boil in spurts we add 1 generous handful of salt, about 2 level teaspoons of coffee. Then we add the first batch of cannelloni, 9 each time. We remove with a wooden spoon so that they do not stick and are loose.
6. On the back of the pasta package comes the cooking time, we must be guided by these instructions because for each type it is different, in this case it is 12 minutes.
7. In this way we will achieve what is called pasta “al dente” or at its right point, that is, it does not pass.

Final preparation and presentation of the cannelloni

1. We drain them and spread on a dry cloth. We put a little filling in one of the ends and roll the cannelloni.
2. Here it is very important that both the meat and the cannelloni are cold so that the process is easier.
3. We place in a rectangular baking dish smeared with butter.
4. We preheat the oven to 200º C.
5. We cover the cannelloni with the light béchamel sauce and sprinkle with grated cheese.
6. Bake 15 minutes at about 200º C and 5 minutes with the gratin set to brown.
7. Take out and let cool for a few minutes, place 3 per person with generous béchamel sauce , more cheese for whoever you want and a pinch of freshly grated black pepper. Delicious!

Be sure to enjoy all the pasta recipes that we have on the blog.

You can see all the step by step photos of this  recipe for cannelloni stuffed with meat  in the next album.

Tips for some fluffy cannelloni

• Carmen tells me that “ now there are so-called pre-cooked cannelloni, it is not necessary to boil them. All you have to do is soak them in hot water for about 20 minutes. I have tried it, it is not the same but they save you the trouble that some cannelloni stick and you have to throw it away . ”
• Alba Fernández tells me by email. “ Whole and peeled canned tomatoes are a great option when preparing an Italian sauce. In many large stores they already sell the whole pomodoro tomato. I recommend it this way because the natural crushed tomato leaves a lot of water and I don’t like it. The trick is to use only the tomatoes without the water they release and it comes in the pot. You can store this water in a jar and then use it in a stew or some lentils . ”