Baked Pasta Rolls/Sideways Canneloni

Hope everyone had an amazing Christmas and New Year!

This recipe is probably the only good thing to have come out of eating nothing but restaurant food for two months (apart from increased fatness-linked winter warmth). My colleagues and I ate at Jamie's Italian on a couple of occasions and enjoyed it - however it's not exactly great for veggies, because although there are a few options which are either veggie already or easily adaptable, nothing is labelled and they are pretty indiscriminate with the Parmesan so you have to just trust the knowledge of your waiter/waitress when it comes to making a choice!

This recipe is an amalgamation of what I ended up eating in Jamie's Italian - which they called Honeycomb Canneloni - and a recipe from Jamie's website called Squash & Spinach Pasta Rotolo. I've picked the best of both worlds when it comes to the filling - half have a spinach and feta filling, half have aubergine and sun-dried tomato. There's no reason why you can't experiment with different stuff, let me know in the comments if you hit on something incredible! I've labelled the recipe steps which relate to the different fillings, so you can ignore one and double the quantity of the other if you like.

Although it's pretty fiddly - I felt like I had 10 thumbs when I was trying to do the rolls - it looks really pretty and is a great variation on boring old canneloni.

Serves 4

What you need

olive oil

6 fresh lasgne sheets (or dried, pre-boiled)

300g fresh spinach

1 onion (chopped)

half a standard-size block of veggie feta

pinch of nutmeg

500ml passata

50g mature cheddar or 25g faux-parmesan

4 cloves garlic, crushed

2 aubergines

a good handful sun-dried tomatoes

a few fresh basil leaves (optional)

salt & pepper

What to do

Aubergine filling - First, slice both the aubergines in half vertically (stalks removed) and score across the cut side in a criss-cross pattern like you would a mango. Place in a baking dish. Drizzle each half with a tablespoon of olive oil (sorry for chronic unhealth but aubergine is such an oil sponge) and place in the oven at 180 degrees for about half an hour until soft all the way through. Set aside to cool.

Spinach filling - While the aubergines are doing, you can be sorting your spinach. Heat a tablespoon of oil in a saucepan and add the onion. Fry until softened and starting to brown at the edges, then add the spinach and put the lid on the pan. Leave for about 5 minutes until the spinach has wilted, then season liberally with salt, pepper and the nutmeg before taking off the heat. Pour off any excess liquid that's come off the spinach.

Aubergine filling - When the cooked aubergine is cool, scrape the flesh out of the skin and mash it with a fork. Cut up the sun-dried tomatoes (I find scissors easiest) and stir them in. Season with salt and pepper. 

Heat a small amount of oil in a large frying pan (So much oil! So many pans! I know, I know) and add the crushed garlic. Wait until it's sizzling but not burning, then pour in the passata. Bring to the boil, then turn off the heat. 

Now for the fiddly part. Lay out one lasagne sheet at a time on a plate or board. It helps to spray or brush the surface with a small amount of oil to stop it sticking. Make sure both your fillings and the feta are within reach.

Spread the lasagne sheet with your chosen filling - alternate fillings when you change sheet to make sure it's half and half - adding a crumbled handful of feta to the spinach one, then roll up like a tiny pasta carpet. Slice each roll into three, and place each roll carefully into the pan with the passata. Place them side by side until the pan is full.

Grate over your cheese of choice and scatter over the basil if you're using. Bake in a 180 degree oven for around half an hour until golden brown.

Serve with garlic bread or a green salad, depending on the degree of January diet austerity you're enforcing.

Spinach Pasta Soufflé Bake

I am back from the horrible wilderness of exam time. I haven't posted anything in absolutely ages, but I honestly haven't produced anything that was even worth eating, let alone blogging! We have been living on convenience food while I frantically tried to learn how to do accounting in time to pass the exam. But it's over now, and what better way to welcome myself back into the kitchen but with a recipe from Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's wonderful Veg Every Day.

This is a tasty cross between a pasta bake and a soufflé, with the added bonus of spinach and a decent amount of cheese. Absolutely impossible to veganise though unfortunately, there really is no substitute that I'm aware of for the wizardry of beaten egg white.

We're still dieting too, I make this just under 400 calories a portion if you use semi-skimmed milk and low fat cheese, which is pretttty good for something involving the unholy trinity of pasta, butter and cheese.

For the original recipe and plenty more brilliant stuff besides, Veg Every Day is available here.

I also realised while photographing this that there is no way to make this food look good. Oh well.

Serves 4

What you need

1 onion, chopped

100g pasta of any shape - except spaghetti, that would be weird

200g fresh spinach

50g butter

50g plain flour

300ml semi-skimmed or whole milk

3 eggs, separated into yolk and white. Hugh suggests one extra egg white but that strikes me as unnecessary ballache, and problem of spare egg yolk. Up to you.

60g mature cheddar cheese

salt, pepper, nutmeg

What to do

Heat either a small amount of olive oil or some frylight, and fry off the onion until soft and golden. Set to one side.

Put the pasta on to boil, following the pack instructions for cooking time, then drain and again set to one side.

Wilt the spinach - easiest way is by putting it in a colander and pouring boiling water over it. Make sure to really squeeze as much water as you can out of the wilted spinach or you'll have a very soggy bake. Try either squashing it with a potato masher or putting it in a clean tea towel and squeezing (flush it with cold water first if you do that, or you'll burn your hands! Stating the obvious but you never know!). Use kitchen scissors to snip the spinach into pieces. 

Melt the butter in a heavy-based saucepan over a medium heat. When melted, add the flour all at once and whisk furiously with a balloon whisk until any lumps have gone. Cook for one minute, then add the milk little by little, whisking all the time. Keep whisking until the mixture has come to the boil. You should have a thickish bechamel sauce. Turn the heat off, then stir in the onion, egg yolks, cheese, nutmeg, spinach, salt and pepper. Stir the cooked pasta into the sauce.

In a pristinely-clean bowl, use an electric whisk to beat the egg whites until they are at the firm peaks stage. Stir a spoonful into your spinach and pasta mixture just to loosen it, then carefully fold the rest of the whites in, taking care not to knock too much of the air out.

Transfer the lot to a baking dish and bake at 190 degrees for 25-30 minutes, or until risen and golden brown. 

Have fun!

Paneer and Spinach Curry

I only gave paneer a try about a year ago and I love it for several reasons: it's delicious, you can fry or grill it and it keeps its shape, it's cheap and it's low-ish in fat compared to other cheeses.

You can apparently make your own at home very easily, see advice on how at We Don't Eat Anything With a Face - must confess I've never tried it myself because it's so cheap and readily available where I live, so let me know if anyone has a crack at it!

This curry isn't intended to be particularly hot so I've only included one green chilli, but if you do prefer a bit more fire you can substitute for one or more red chillies and keep the seeds in.

So that you're not stressed out trying to prep and watch the pan at the same time, it's worth doing all your chopping, grating, crushing and what have you beforehand. 

You can easily veganise this by making sure you fry in oil rather than ghee, and using either cubed tofu or pre-boiled potatoes in place of the paneer.

Serve with rice, naan, chappattis, raita... whatever you feel like!

Serves 2-3 (2 greedy people, or 2 normal appetites with leftovers)


What you need

2 tbsp vegetable oil or ghee
1 large onion, chopped
1 green chilli, de-seeded and chopped finely
a thumb sized nubbin of ginger, grated
2 large cloves of garlic, crushed
1 tsp ground cumin
1 tsp ground coriander
1 tsp garam masala
1 tsp turmeric
227g pack of paneer (size as sold in Sainsburys), cut into smallish cubes
1 400g tin of chopped tomatoes
A pinch of salt
500g bag of spinach
chopped coriander to garnish

What to do

Heat up your oil or ghee over a medium heat, then add the onions, ginger, garlic and chilli. Turn down the heat a little if necessary so that you can just sweat them all together until soft rather than browning - this should take around 5-7 minutes.

Add the dry spices and cook for another minute. Stir in the tomatoes and a little salt to taste, then leave to simmer for 10-15 minutes.

While the sauce is simmering, heat up a little oil in a separate pan - preferably non-stick - then add your paneer. Keep turning it until it's brown on all sides, then set to one side. You need to add this right at the end or it'll go soggy.

Once the sauce has been simmering for a while, it should have reduced down quite a bit. This is good. Loads of water will come out of the spinach once you add it, so your sauce even needs to look a bit on the dry side.

Add your spinach - the easiest way is a handful at a time, waiting for the last handful to wilt in before adding another. Cook for another minute until all the spinach is soft and wilted in, then stir in the fried paneer.

Garnish with coriander if you're a fan, serve with whatever accompaniments you fancy, and enjoy!