This recipe comes from the German translation of Time-Life's “Die Küche in
Italien”, originally published in 1968. Apart from the horrible US cups and spoons measurements, it's pretty good. The main reason
for this recipe is to get the measures straight and to adapt them to my personal tastes.
Thaw the spinach. You can use fresh spinach (in this case, 375 g), but it's more work
and there's no advantage.
Finely chop the onion and start frying gently in the olive oil.
While the onion is frying, peel and crush the garlic and add to the pan shortly before
the onion is dry. The mixture should not brown.
When the onions are done, add the spinach and continue frying until the moisture has
evaporated. Reserve. I've found that you don't need to chop fresh “baby” spinach.
Your mileage may vary.
In the same frying pan, melt the butter and fry the meat until dry. Again, it shouldn't
brown considerably.
When the meat is done, coarsely mince meat and onion and spinach mixture to get a
uniform mixture.
There should be enough butter and fat left from the meat to fry the chicken liver. Fry
until barely firm; the livers will cook further in the oven. Chop coarsely and add to
the filling.
Whisk the eggs and add to the filling.
Add cheese, cream, oregano, salt and pepper to taste. Mix thoroughly.
Cook pasta and chop into sheets about 15 cm square.
Coat the bottom of an oven dish with sauce béchamel
and place the cannelloni in them:
When finished, cover with the remaining béchamel and leave to cool. The sauce
will form a tough skin which makes the next step easier. And yes, this is a photo from
a different batch.
The quantities above are enough for about 22 cannelloni (45 g per tube). Reckon 3 tubes per
person, so it's enough for about 7 people.
How much béchamel? Over the course of the time I have come to the quantity of “béchamel
from 60 g milk” per tube, so for The quantities above seem right. But if you're doing it
with a different quantity, béchamel from 60 ml of milk for each tube seems about right.
Making the pasta is a significant part of the work. You can buy ready-made cannelloni
tubes, mainly dry and “no cook”—in other words, the tubes cook in the oven. Most recommend
a particularly liquid béchamel, and though I claimed I've had good results with some, but
not all, of them, I can't recall when. In particular I had a bad experience with San Remo—despite the name, an Australian company. At first I blamed it on them, but
in March 2016 I tried it
with genuine Italian tubes, made by DeCecco—so
genuine that the instructions are only in Italian. The results were better, but not good.
I think this is a dish for fresh pasta.
