I was googling for an easy spinach and ricotta recipe and for some reason was pretty difficult… all the recipes I came across had too many ingredients or too many steps for a school night so I made this up instead. It turned out really well! You can’t go wrong with an all in one baked dinner which can go straight from oven to table. I made a point of using whole ingredients, by that I mean not using 600g of ricotta when you can buy 250g or 500g pre packaged in the supermarket (also, zest or juice from half a lemon… WHY?!!) I don’t know about you but I find recipes which do that super annoying and I usually either over or under so I don’t have surplus ingredients to find another use for.
I added chilli flakes to my sauce and if you wanted to get creative anchovies, or olives, or parsley, or pesto drizzle would all go well if you wanted to “pimp” your cannelloni.
Ingredients
- 250g frozen spinach (thawed)
- 500g ricotta
- 1/2 cup grated parmesan
- 1 egg
- Fresh lasagna sheets (I buy the small rectangles so no trimming is required)
- 2 x 400g cans cherry tomatoes (or crushed is fine)
- 2 cloves garlic, finely sliced/crushed (or more)
- chilli flakes
- salt and pepper
- mozzarella cheese
Method
- Preheat your oven to 200C.
- Using your hands, squeeze the liquid from the spinach and put the liquid into your baking dish and the spinach into a mixing bowl.
- Into the bowl add the ricotta, parmesan, egg and salt and pepper. Stir well.
- Put a little bit of tomato juice in the bottom of the baking dish so the bottom is covered and your cannelloni won’t stick. Place a pasta sheet on your bench, spoon on some ricotta mixture and roll up into a tube. Repeat. If you have excess mixture just push more into the cannelloni… no harm done!
- Now add the garlic, chilli, salt and pepper and cans of tomatoes on top of your cannelloni. Sprinkle with a few handfuls of grated mozzarella.
- Bake for about 45 minutes until bubbly and golden.
