Real Italian cannelloni - what is it? Stuffed pasta or rolls?

Italian national cuisine is replete with numerous cooking options for pasta.

Macaroni is the generalized name of hundreds of pasta types

Many saw in the stores pasta cannelloni. They are made from hard wheat varieties such as "durum". In most cases eggs are not added to the dough - only water and flour. However, the concept of "pasta" for Italian cuisine is too narrow. There are a lot of different names for pasta. It's easy for an alien to get confused. Of paramount importance is the form.

Cannelloni or manicotti?

One of the national dishes of Italy - cannelloni stuffed. It is stuffed with stuffed straw from a fresh dough. They are baked in the oven with tomato or white sauce. It is not right to think about cannelloni that these are large hollow cylinders intended for filling with stuffing. A paste of this form is actually used for stuffing, but is called manicotti. A cannelloni is a plate of dough, into which minced meat is wrapped like a roll. You can say about cannelloni that these are small rolls. Plates of dough for them can be confused with lasagna plates, but they differ in size.

Fillings for cannelloni

Cannelloni stuffed with different fillings. It can be minced meat or smoked meat with Feta cheese, seafood, vegetables, cheese, mushrooms, cottage cheese and so on. Cannelloni pasta will fit both in the vegetarian menu and in the diet of meat dish fans . This article provides detailed instructions for preparing cannelloni with spinach. This is an amazing dish, but the filling can be made from other vegetables - cauliflower, broccoli, rhubarb, artichokes, asparagus, etc.

Dough for cannelloni

If you are told about cannelloni, this is a very simple dish, do not believe it. Italian housewives cook ready pasta for them rarely, preferring to do it themselves. They mix a rather steep dough from flour, water and salt, roll them into a thin layer, put stuffing on it and wrap it in a roll, which is cut into equal parts. The resulting mini-rolls are brought to readiness in the oven. This dough can be stored in the fridge for about five days. Such rolls - not the most simple, but very tasty dish. To succeed your first cannelloni, the recipe with the photo will help not to get confused and sustain a sequence. The main thing is that the paste is not digested. It should be "al dente", that is, elastic. If you follow the instructions carefully, you can cook excellent Italian cannelloni. Spinach and cheese, which they stuffed, very well combined with tomato sauce from fresh tomatoes and mayonnaise.

Cannelloni with spinach. Ingredients

For the test, you will need:

- 2 cups of flour from hard wheat varieties;
- 4 chicken eggs at room temperature.

For the filling you will need:

- 2 tablespoons butter;

- 1 kg of freshly chopped fresh spinach;

- 3 heads of thinly sliced green onions;

- 200 g of ricotta cheese;

- 100 g of prosciutto ham, cut into small cubes;

- 3 tbsp. Spoons of grated parmesan cheese;

- salt to taste;

- Ground black pepper to taste.

Preparation of cannelloni with spinach

Making the dough

Pour the flour on the table and make a groove in the center. Break the eggs into a flour and gently mix them with flour with a fork. Begin from the center, slowly, in a circular rotation, stir the eggs into the flour. If the dough turns liquid and sticky, pour in more flour. Knead the dough. It should well lag behind hands, be elastic and tight enough. Sprinkle the dough with flour, wrap in polyethylene and leave on the table for one hour.

Now, let's take care of the stuffing

Melt the butter in a very large skillet over medium heat. Put spinach and onions in it. They do not have to be fried. Let only slightly give juice, lose elasticity and become soft. Do not put all the spinach at once, since a large volume is difficult to stir. Add it as the greens settle, until you put everything away. Put in the filling ricotta and ham, salt, pepper, sprinkle with parmesan and mix everything thoroughly. Remove the frying pan from the heat and cool completely.

Forming a roll

Pour a lot of flour on the table and spread it over the entire working surface. Expand the dough and roll, if possible, into a rectangle. The size is determined by the capacity in which you will brew it, laying it evenly, without bending. Most suitable dishes such as gusatnitsy or rectangular baking tray with a high bead. Roulette is cooked, completely immersed in water.

On the rolled dough, put the filling and distribute it exactly over the entire surface, leaving a free border around the edges, one centimeter in size. Gently roll the dough with stuffing into a roll, helping yourself with a confectionery scraper. Roll the roll into gauze so tightly that it does not spread. Here you need a certain skill. Try not to stuff the filling out. Tie the ends of the gauze with a thread and cut or fold to prevent deforming the roll.

Cook the roll and serve

Pour water into the frying pan or deep baking tray, bring to a boil, lightly salt and roll the roll into it. It should boil over a small fire for about an hour. If the roll protrudes above the surface of the water, then for even cooking, it should be turned every ten minutes. After an hour of weak boiling, take the roll from the water and leave it for ten minutes on the table. After this time it can be freed from gauze, cut into pieces and poured with sauce, as in the photo.

You got a real national dish of Italy. Now you know about cannelloni that it's not just big pasta with stuffing. This is a very original roll. He is sometimes made using ready-made lasagna plates, but this is just an imitation.