Ready for a (slight) break from dessert recipes? I know I am. 12-19: Cannelloni Milanese is the last card I have for Group 12, and it’s been hanging out in my “to-do” pile for a LONG time. In the interest of finally “landing this plane” sometime this century, let’s knock this one out now.
Sounds good in theory, right? Perhaps…however, Simply Delicious has tricked me before.
If you like the vegetable lasagna from Stouffer’s (or at least, used to back when frozen food was good), this is totally gonna be your jam. If you don’t, you’re probably in for a bad time.
I did some searching for “cannelloni Milanese” and found a few things that looked kind of close (and some that were not that close), but nothing that expressly used carrots, cabbage, and spinach.
I’m not sure WHERE they got this recipe from, but I’ve looked at it a thousand times and couldn’t work up the courage to try it until now. I think it was the inclusion of cabbage and carrots that has always deterred me in the past.
Ingredients. I already had heavy whipping cream and needed milk for another recipe, so I decided to forgo buying half-and-half and essentially made my own instead. I’m using veggie broth instead of chicken to make this vegetarian (an easy swap) and some leftover egg lasagna sheets which will actually work very well for this use case.
Heating up the broth–they say you’ll need a quart, but expect to need at least double (if not more) than that.
Softening the lasagna sheets. They don’t tell you to boil the sheets, so I tried to keep it under a boil as much as I could.
After draining the broth (and keeping it for the veggies) and soaking the softened lasagna sheets in cold(ish) water.
Heating up the broth again while I start prepping the veggies.
Practicing my brunoise—Top Chef just ended and I’m going through withdrawals. These probably need to be even smaller to be a true brunoise.
Carrots are finally finished, now onto the cabbage. I figure the finer/smaller the cut on the veggies, the more it will seem like a cohesive “filling” and less like “hey here’s a bunch of random vegetables rolled up in pasta”.
Slicing the cabbage.
I chose to do these as individual servings/dishes instead of as one big dish–easier for portioning and for leftovers.
Cooking (blanching?) the carrots and cabbage in the broth.
While those cook, I drained the thawed spinach and tried to squeeze out as much water as I could.
Once the cabbage and carrots were done, I drained those off as well.
Mixing the vegetables together with the Parmesan cheese and oregano.
I eyeballed it as best I could, then started portioning and rolling cannellonis.
Closer look at the filling. I tried to emulate the Stouffer’s veggie lasagna without doing it EXACTLY the same.
4 servings with 3 cannellonis each. Some of the noodles were less “structurally sound” than others, but I managed to make it work.
Mixing up the sauce. So far, this does not look very appetizing. I’m using tomato paste instead of çbecause that’s what I have and diluting it should work just fine (especially for just 3 tablespoons worth).
It’s weirdly pink, but I think that would have happened with tomato purée as well. Let’s hope it doesn’t stay as pink as 6-24: Mushroom-Almond Chicken did.
After sprinkling with cheese and adding some extra “pizza seasoning” (basil and oregano) on top, they’re ready for the oven.
Oh good, not pink on the other side. Actually, they don’t look that bad…
Final picture–it was like a fresher version of that Stouffer’s veggie lasagna. Again, if you like that, you’ll love this. I tolerate that, so I was okay with this.
Grade: B-
