Monday 26 March 2007

What's for dinner?


This was our dinner last night. It didn't last long, so either it was incredibly good or the boys were very hungry from running around outside all day.




The filling is made of ricotta cheese, a can of chickpeas, garlic, onion, one egg, a bit of parmesan if you like and whatever spices you like. I run it through the food processor until it is smooth. I use a plastic bag, with a corner snipped off, to put the filling into the cannelloni shells- icing bag style. (S is usually the ones who makes cannelloni, and the first time he did it (years ago)he was filling them by trying to stuff the filling in with a spoon handle, boy he was not impressed when I came along and showed him what to do and took about 3 minutes to fill all the rest when it had taken him ages to fill a few) I use the kind of cannelloni that is oven-ready so you don't need to boil them. Just completely cover them with pasta sauce and then bake. The only thing to remember is to add quite a bit of water to the pasta sauce so that the cannelloni shells will turn out tender. It is actually a fairly quick dinner. I use the whole box of shells, it makes a 9 by 13 pan and also another smaller pan. We had 5 cannelloni left. ;-(

We also have salad, or veggies and dip, most every night. I like us to have as much raw food as possible. The buns have a bit of earth balance with garlic on them and then are toasted in the oven - we are all big eaters and sometimes just need this to fill us up. The salad dressing is made in the blender. It is oil, vinegar, Dijon mustard, dill, garlic, a bit of sweetener, salt, pepper and paprika.

4 comments:

Samantha said...

Yummy!!! What a great tip for filling the shells. I always feel overwhelmed with receipes that have a lot of steps but you make it sound so easy :o)

Mary-Sue said...

Oh.My.Goddess. This looks amazing. I think I can even smell it!! Can't wait to try it. I've never stuffed pasta, but what a GREAT idea! No wonder you go through 50 tomato plants worth of produce each year! I've started about that many now too. WHERE oh WHERE to plant them? ha!
Your salad and dressing look amazing too. Thanks so much.

Nicola said...

That does look good, and I'm sure I could easily make a vegan version of that with tofu inside the canneloni shells. Maybe the tofu mixture for the lasagne in How it all Vegan would work.

Katherine said...

You definitely can make this vegan by replacing the ricotta with tofu. That's what I do anyways, when I make manicotti. I saute some veggies and mix them with tofu to stuff the pasta shells with. Like Heather, I'm lucky if there's any leftovers with this dish because it's definitely a favourite with the whole family.