Country Cooking-Spinach Cannelloni

After reading through my new cookbook some more, (Country Recipes), I decided to make spinach cannelloni. Her description of this recipe will make you feel like you're in Italy with her! She talks about friends and family sharing recipes and meals together, and how fresh everything was that they cooked with. Even though the recipe seemed long and tedious (just by looking at it), it was much easier than I expected! The only difference was that when we went to the grocery store, I thought I remembered someone (DJ) saying in the isle that spaghetti sauce was in the cart. I think I must have dreamed that, and didn't even enough supplies to make my own. However, we did have Alfredo sauce in the pantry, so I used that. You make your own white sauce in this recipe so ours was very creamy and delicious! I will probably make it again and use the red sauce just to see what the difference in the flavor is. So let's get started with the ingredients you will need for this:

Ingredients
3 TBS olive oil
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 medium onion, minced
2 cups cooked spinach, squeezed dry and chopped
1 TBS butter (I used about 1 1/2)
1 pound ground sirloin (we used venison)
2 TBS chopped fresh parsley (store was out, I used dried-and used only about half)
2 TBS chopped fresh oregano (store was out, I used dried-and used only about half)
1 TBS basil
1 large egg, beaten
2/3 cup grated Parmesan cheese
2 TBS light cream
1/4 tsp ground nutmeg
1/4 tsp salt
freshly ground pepper
12 cooked manicotti tubes (or pasta sheets--I used manicotti)
4-5 cups Italian Tomato Sauce (forgot this--we used Alfredo)

Besciamella (White Sauce)
4 TBS butter
4 TBS all-purpose flour
2 cups light cream or half-and-half
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp ground nutmeg

First, I got my water boiling for the manicotti noodles. Then, in a large skillet, you're going to heat the oil and add the garlic and onion to the oil and saute. You are not wanting to brown the garlic and onion, just cook until they are translucent. Next you're going to add the spinach and cook about 5 minutes until the mixture becomes dry. Remove everything from the skillet, and place in a large bowl. In the same skillet, you are going to melt the butter and brown the meat.  Once the meat no longer pink, add the meat, oregano, egg, parsley, basil, cream, 1/3 cup of Parmesan, salt and pepper to taste, and the nutmeg to the bowl and mix well!
Don't forget about your manicotti! You're going to want to cook them al dente and make sure they are not "too done" because they will fall apart on you while you're trying to stuff them.

 Before the oven

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees and stuff each tube of manicotti with the meat mixture. Pour your red sauce (in our case white) on the bottom of the pan (just a thin layer). Next add the stuffed manicotti and then layer with the red sauce again, and then a layer of the Besciamella (white sauce), and then finish it off with Parmesan cheese! Pop it in the oven for about 40 minutes, or until the cheese and bubbly and brown! Serve and enjoy!

After we dug in! Yummy

If you're interested in purchasing the wonderful cookbook you can find it here! It's $18.95 on Amazon!

Stay tuned for more recipes and

~Happy Eating~