Italian food is kind of like Mexican food, all the same ingredients, just arranged in different ways. This is my version of cannelloni. Not to be confused with manicotti. The difference is cannelloni is tubes of pasta stuffed with meat, cheese, whatever. Manicotti is the same filling wrapped in basically a crepe. One you stuff the filling in the pasta. The other you wrap the pasta around the filling. Tomato, tomahto.
Since this filling includes meat, I just go with a marinara (meatless) sauce. The filling’s good enough to just buy some sauce in a jar. I happened to have some sauce I made for company that had to be vegan and couldn’t include mushrooms. So I made my basic sauce and in place of the meat, I chopped up olives and carrots really fine. They looked like ground beef in the sauce, and gave it some flavor and texture. It worked really well with the cannelloni. But I digress…. On with the recipe.
1 Tablespoon olive oil
1 cup chopped onion
1/2 pound hamburger
1/2 pound mild Italian sausage
2 cloves garlic
10 oz frozen, chopped spinach
15 oz ricotta cheese
2 cups fresh, grated Parmesan cheese (divided in half)
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp pepper
2 large eggs
3 cups marinara sauce (or more)
Package of dry pasta tubes
Saute the onion in the olive oil until translucent. Add the hamburger and sausage, and cook until browned, then add the garlic and cook for a minute or two longer. Drain off the fat/oil. (I sop it up with paper towels). Stir in the spinach and let it cool.
When cool, stir in one cup of the Parmesan cheese and the rest of the ingredients except for the sauce and remaining cup of cheese.
Cook the pasta tubes according to the package directions. You’ll probably find them described as “Manicotti” on the package. There will typically be 14 tubes in the package, but you’ll only need 12, which is good because at least a couple always get destroyed.
Drain the pasta and separate the tubes so they don’t stick together. Put a thin layer of sauce in the bottom of your baking pan. Then I put on some latex gloves (a staple in my house), grab a small spoon, and stuff the filling into the shells.
Pour the rest of the sauce over your cannelloni, then sprinkle on the last cup of Parmesan cheese. Bake 15 minutes at 400 degrees covered with foil. Then remove the foil and bake another 15 minutes until bubbly and lightly browned.