The recipe
Ingredients
- 200 g dried cannelloni requiring no pre-boiling
- 200 g cooked leaf spinach, thoroughly squeezed
- 400 g ricotta
- 40 g finely grated Parmesan
- 125 g well-drained or firm mozzarella
- 700 g passata
- 150 ml water, plus extra hot water as needed
- 1 garlic clove
- 1 tbsp olive oil
- Nutmeg, salt and pepper
Method
- Preheat the oven to 200°C conventional heat. Finely chop the garlic and soften in the olive oil over low heat for 30 seconds. Add the passata and 150 ml water, simmer gently for 5 minutes and season.
- Finely chop the prepared spinach and mix with the ricotta, 20 g Parmesan, a small pinch of nutmeg, pepper and a little salt. Transfer to a piping bag with a sufficiently wide opening.
- Fill the dry cannelloni evenly, working from both ends if necessary. Spread about one-third of the sauce in the dish, arrange the tubes side by side and cover completely with the remaining sauce.
- Cover with the ovenproof lid and bake on the middle shelf for 25 minutes. Carefully remove the lid and scatter over the diced mozzarella and remaining 20 g Parmesan.
- Bake uncovered for another 10–15 minutes. Follow the packet guidance and check doneness: pasta in the centre should have no hard core, and the filling must be thoroughly hot. If necessary, add a little hot water, replace the lid and bake longer.
- Rest for 5 minutes before portioning. Divide between four plates with some sauce from the dish.
Weigh spinach after cooking and squeezing
The 200 grams of spinach is the weight after cooking and thorough squeezing. Starting with 200 grams of raw leaves produces much less filling and is not an equivalent substitution. You can use fresh or frozen leaf spinach: cook according to the product instructions, cool briefly and squeeze out excess water. Only then weigh the required amount. The recipe timing assumes this prepared spinach; allow additional time for preparing it if necessary.
Chop the spinach finely so that long leaf fibres do not block the piping bag. Mix it with ricotta that has no visible pool of whey. This filling needs no added egg. Use dried cannelloni whose packet explicitly allows them to be used without pre-boiling. Fresh rolls or a product requiring pre-cooking need a different method. Check the packet instructions before filling.
Dry pasta needs sauce all around it
Cannelloni absorb liquid in the oven. Dilute the passata with 150 millilitres of water and simmer it only briefly. The sauce needs to flow easily and surround every tube, including the ends and spaces between them. Arrange the pasta in a single layer; stacking encourages uneven cooking. Choose a dish of roughly 20 by 30 centimetres with sides at least five centimetres high and a matching ovenproof lid.
Keep the dish covered for the first baking stage. Add the cheese afterwards and let the top colour uncovered. Check a tube from the middle with a knife tip: the pasta should be tender enough, without a hard, dry core. The filling must be thoroughly hot as well. If the pasta is still firm and the sauce has become dry, pour a little hot water around the edge, cover again and continue baking. The five-minute rest before serving is additional to the actual oven time.