daring kitchen, june

Summer has arrived! When warm weather hits I go a little overboard from the withdrawl of winter and grill just about everything. I was, seriously, wondering if an egg dish could be grilled the other morning. 
The challenge this month brought a break from the grill: making cannelloni. You know, the big pasta tubes stuffed and baked, yeah, those. But homemade. Yay!

Manu from Manu’s Menu was our Daring Cooks lovely June hostess and has challenged us to make traditional Italian cannelloni from scratch! We were taught how to make the pasta, filling, and sauces shared with us from her own and her family’s treasured recipes! 

I decided to make all the pasta at once, so tried two fillings in one meal. It made for a lot of pots on the go, but thanks to sous chef M (our 12-year-old daughter) things went smoothly. One batch had a filling of blanched spinach, ricotta and parmigiano reggiano cheeses. The other was con carne - a meat filling. The fillings were made using the recipes Manu provided, the sauces were made (béchamel for the veggie, tomato for the meat), and the pasta prepared.

Egg volcano!

Family milestone moment: M made the béchamel sauce by herself, stirring the roux and adding the milk and seeing it all thicken. Not quite the same milestone as first steps, but kitchen-wise it was pretty cool :) 

I once saw a person on TV make pasta on the counter. No bowl. I've always liked doing that with the kids around, because they think it's funny, and hey! one less dish to clean. The flour and salt are made into a little mound on the counter, a hollow made in the middle, and the eggs broken into it so that it looks like a sort of volcano. With eggs ... okay, the image does sort of break down there.

Flour working in

Anyway, the eggs are gently fork-whisked, and pull in the flour as they do so. By the time you've pulled in the walls of your bowl, the dough has formed enough that it's not running all over the place. 

The pasta rested before being rolled out by my hand-crank Olympia pasta maker. The sheets were cut to size, boiled quickly (I love, love, love how fast fresh pasta cooks!), then rolled around the fillings, covered with the correct sauce, and baked. 

Test taste: delicious! We liked them both. D said the meat ones were like lasagna rolls, and we all loved the spinach ones, too. A fun thing about these is the chance for variations on the theme. I'm thinking mushrooms with pancetta might be interesting, with a chasseur type sauce. Hmmm... 

After baking - we liked them both!

While many steps were involved, this is really an easy dish to make. The fillings and sauces came together quickly, and the pasta takes time but is straightforward (and so delicious!). M and I chatted and laughed as we rolled the pasta around the filling, and were rewarded with delicious smells as it baked. 

Tonight, though, it's back to the grill with venison and some polenta I made this morning.