Saturday. 26/09/2015. 'Cannelloni with Double Cheese Sauce'.

This recipe comes from 'Mary Berry Cooks the Perfect, Step by Step.' by Mary Berry. Page 166. 

Book Pic.

When it comes to pasta, we are both partial to lasagna and cannelloni, however if I learnt to do the first one with a Sicilian boyfriend back in the days, I didn't know how to make the latter. So when we saw the book picture, our eyes lit up, and our ears could hear imaginary 'Kerching!'.

The magic wand: Celery.

It was a joy to make although it demanded some time and efforts. First you prepare the mixture. This is when you appreciate combinations that travelled through time and just work, purely and simply. 

It is a bit like getting your basic right for a flavoursome dish. You will often find those in combination in your foodie adventure: 
-Onions, Carrots, Celery and Garlic. 
It is like a simple magic formula, and 'Abracadabra': -'Et voilà!', you have a flavoursome base.

The Magic Base. 

minced meat.

As for combining the two different minces, beef and pork, I did hear of it before and tried it in shop bought meatballs which claimed to be made the Italian way and they were lovely. If it initially made my partner's eyebrows raise a tad, the result spoke for itself and convinced him not to be a minced purist about mince.

Becomes the Magic Minced Mixture

Béchamel Sauce.

The Béchamel sauce may be tricky to do but I always found the home made ones are much better than the white sauce stuff that you can find in jars. Now that is me being a purist in that matter but I would add by experience. 

The Cannelloni Operation. 

However the trickiest part has to be the filling of the cannelloni tubes. It does require an operating surface of some sort to get on with the delicate operation. My partner joined me there, for he loves all sort of uneasy tasks and finding a way to make them easy. So he soon got the filling of the cannelloni organised like a military operation that goes smoothly, and it was fun. When our bellies's ammunitions were full up to the brim they went in the oven.

the lined up Cannelloni.

Emmental.

I only swapped one ingredient cheddar cheese for Emmental to give those cannelloni a northern italian feel, where you share different slopes of a same mountain with Switzerland. Like Gruyère, Emmental is fantastic to melt but more importantly taste great. You recognise Emmental by its distinctive holes.

Luscious amount of Emmental and Parmesan.

The result looks very homely and comforting. It delivers on flavour and fill your belly right up. It was a hand on heart five from both of us and we will keep that recipe close to our heart. It is going to be home staple and a joint effort each times we do those babies.