Pretend Cannelloni

You have lasagna sheets at home but you don't want anything drenched in sauce and drowning in cheese. Instead, you are craving cannelloni in butter sauce. So here's what you do.

You pick three lasagna sheets and set them to boil in plenty of water. In the 10-12 minutes they will take to boil (follow your package directions here), you make your spinach and ricotta filling. Heat a tbsp of olive oil in a pan. Add 1/2 cup finely chopped spinach and 1/4 cup finely chopped spring onions (just the green bits). Cook, stirring constantly until all the moisture your spinach exuded evaporates. Add salt and black pepper, turn off the heat and mix in 2 tbsp crumbled paneer or ricotta cheese.

Now drain your lasagna sheets and cut them all in half to get even squares. Place a tablespoon of your filling along the side of one of the squares and roll to form a tube. Just repeat the process for the other five and that's your cannelloni.

I was in a no-sauce mood so I then heated 2 tbsp of butter in a pan. Once it melted and started to brown, I dropped in a handful of basil leaves. Arranged my cannelloni on top of this and as they started to sear, i topped them off with grated parmesan and some more basil.

And then, because it was just me, I ate them straight out of the pan. It might be a lovely effect even for company - just try it once!

Comments

Linhy said…

Looks really nice!! I got your blog from Lulu.

February 26, 2011 at 12:03 AM

chef and her kitchen said…

Wow.....that looks very nice dear....thats a nice idea too...

February 26, 2011 at 9:07 AM

Bergamot said…

This sounds like a good idea since I made the filling today for making baked cannelloni, completely forgetting that my oven's not working. So I will try this. I too use lasagna sheets for cannelloni.

February 27, 2011 at 4:30 PM

I've found my perfect cookie

It's a bite sized cookie, with flavors of a pie, shape of a croissant and a pretty, pretty name. It's Rugelach. I first heard of this cookie when it became the baking pick for Tuesdays with Dorrie a couple of months back. The looks, the concept - everything was fascinating. And I've dreamed of making this cookie ever since. I ditched hundreds of recipes floating around and went straight to the master. It's Dorie Greenspan's recipe that I used, and ain't I glad I got it so perfect the very first time. So what's rugelach? It's cream-cheese pastry dough, rolled then cut into wedges, spread with jam and sugar and fillings of choice, rolled into crescents and baked. First the dough. Dorie did it in her processor, but I just went and did it by hand. Put 100 gms cream cheese and 100 gms butter out of the fridge until they were soft but still cold. Added both to a cup of plain flour (I omitted the salt because I use salted butter). Rubbed the flour and but

Aloo Paranthas

In all these years of blogging, I've somehow never managed to talk about aloo paranthas, the potato stuffed flatbread that's a standard breakfast in North India. Possibly because they are such a staple in our home, I found there wouldn't be enough interest in the recipe. But I've also realised over time that my mom's recipe is unique, using a combination of flavours and spices that make these paranthas delicious. But that's not the only reason for this post. I also wanted to tell you about a super cool party and some ways we found to make aloo paranthas even better and believe it or not, healthier. The party in question was hosted by Rushina at her cooking studio a few months back. For a while now, Rushina has been talking about the merits of cling film, parchment and something called cooking foil made by Asahi Kasei. Because we won't believe that you can really cook without oil but using science, she invited a bunch of us over for a potluck lunch.

Mystery Fruit

This only happened a few times every year, just when the rainy season kicked in. A street hawker will come by, straw basket on head. He will yell "kaul chapni" and I will run out to buy a bundle of these. Stuck together like flowers, they looked like a bouquet. Every hole contains a little fruit. You break out the package, peel the tiny fruit that pops out and eat it. Done slowly, it can take you an hour to eat an head. Or did, when I was about 12 years old. That was the last time I saw this fruit. I've never seen it again, didn't even know what it was called or where it came from. Three weeks back, Vikram Doctor wrote about a store in Khar that sells Sindhi foods. He described this fruit and I knew it came from my vivid childhood memories. And finally, I knew we were talking about lotus fruit. Now talk about coincidences. Last weekend, I was passing by a lane in Bandra and for the first time in many, many years I saw the straw basket filled with my mytery fru

Bombay Foodie

Search This Blog