Messy Sausage and more pasta!

Right I’ll be perfectly honest, unless you are American you may find some of the ingredients, for this next one a little obscure and hard to get, although alternatives are possible – manicotti is cannelloni pasta shells, while in America I found manicotti to be almost toblerone shaped and ridged, where as cannelloni is cylindrical and smooth, either will work equally well though. Sausage meat in Germany, from what I can tell doesn’t exist….. and if it does I haven’t found it yet, although always keeping my eyes peeled for that all elusive ingredient. So I sort of make my own, this is a perfect way round the inability to find sausage meat, it’s simple but messy – buy your favourite sausages, and squeeze the meat out of it’s skin… Hey Presto…. Sausage meat…. How cool am I?

Sausage Pasta

1lb sausage meat (that’s an awful lot of sausage squeezing)

2 cups cottage cheese
1 package manicotti or cannelloni shells
1 (26 oz) jar tomato sauce (whichever type you like)
1 cup shredded mozzarella
1 tsp sage

1, Preheat your oven to 350˚F (180˚C), and grease a baking dish big enough for all you pasta. In a large mixing bowl, mix together, the sausage meat, cottage cheese and sage. Once it’s well mixed, stuff it into the pasta shells, then place in your baking dish. Top with the tomato sauce.

2, Cover and bake, for about an hour, or if you have a thermometer the centre to the shell should have reached 160˚F (80˚C).

3, Uncover the pasta bake and sprinkle with the mozzarella, and bake for a further 10 minutes, or until the cheese has melted and bubbling.  

Cheesy spinach cannelloni

Just to state the obvious if you are unsure what cannelloni (manicotti) are, they are long tubes of pasta which can be filled with all sorts of things, from cheese and spinach to any kind of ground meat, etc. topped with some sort of sauce and cheese, baked for about 30 minutes.

After I moved out of my ex's house I lived on cannelloni, I wasn't entirely sure what went in it...... It was a frozen meal with spinach, cheese and tomato sauce - plenty of garlic! That's about all I knew! When I found this recipe I was super excited because I could make it myself. Turns out it was inedible, however it was far from brilliant...... It took me awhile to want to try it again and I did some major recipe tweeking. This is what I came up with.

Cheesy spinach cannelloni

butter for greasing

18 no-precook cannelloni

30 grams Parmesan, grated

jar of tomato sauce

FILLING

1 small onion diced

1 garlic clove, minced

500 grams spinach

2 cups ricotta or whipped cream cheese

1. Make the filling, heat the oil, add the onion and garlic, cook for 3-5 minutes until soft, add the spinach and cook on a high heat for 1-2 minutes, then add the ricotta, or cream cheese which ever you are using and salt and pepper to taste

2. Grease an oven proof dish, spoon the spinach mixture into the cannelloni spoon on the sauce, sprinkle with Parmesan and bake at 400°F (200°C) for 30 minutes.

Servings: 4