Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking - Marcella Hazan [108]
3. Transfer the meat to a mixing bowl, using a slotted spoon so as to leave all the melted fat in the pan. Add one or two pinches of salt, the chopped ham, the egg yolk, a tiny grating—about ⅛ teaspoon—of nutmeg, the grated Parmesan, the ricotta, and ¼ cup of the béchamel sauce. Mix with a fork until all ingredients are evenly combined. Taste and correct for salt.
4. To make the sauce: Put the 2 tablespoons butter and the chopped onion in a saucepan, turn on the heat to medium, and cook the onion until it becomes colored a pale gold. Add the meat, crumbling it with a fork. Turn the heat down to medium low, cook the meat until it loses its raw color, add salt, and the chopped tomatoes with their juice, and adjust the heat so that the sauce cooks at the slowest of simmers. Cook for 45 minutes, stirring from time to time. Taste and correct for salt.
5. To make the pasta: Prepare the yellow pasta dough by machine, or by hand, rolling it out as thin as it will come by either method. Cut the pasta into rectangles 3 inches by 4 inches.
6. Bring water to a boil. On a nearby work counter, spread clean, dry, cloth towels. Set a bowl of cold water not too far from the stove. Following the instructions in the recipe for green lasagne, parboil, rinse, and spread the pasta strips on the cloth towels.
7. Preheat the oven to 400°.
8. Thickly butter the bottom of the baking dish.
9. To make the cannelloni: Spread 1 tablespoon of béchamel sauce on a dinner plate. Place one of the pasta strips over the béchamel, rotating it to coat all its underside. On the pasta’s top side, spread about a tablespoon of filling, enough to cover thinly, but leaving an exposed ½-inch border all around. Roll up the pasta softly, jelly-roll fashion, starting from its narrower side. Place the roll in the pan, its overlapping edge facing down. Proceed until you have used up all the pasta or all the filling. From time to time spread more béchamel on the bottom of the dinner plate, but keep some in reserve. It’s all right to fit the cannelloni tightly into the baking dish, but do not overlap them.
10. Spread the meat sauce over the cannelloni, coating them uniformly. Spread the remaining béchamel over the sauce, sprinkle with the grated Parmesan, and dot with butter.
11. Bake on the topmost rack of the preheated oven until a light, golden crust forms on top. It should take between 10 and 15 minutes, but do not bake longer than 15 minutes. After removing from the oven, allow the cannelloni to settle for at least 10 minutes, then serve at table directly from the baking dish.
Ahead-of-time note The cannelloni may be completed up to two days in advance up to this point. Refrigerate under tightly sealing plastic wrap.
Sliced Pasta Roll with Spinach and Ham Filling
IN ITALY we call it a rotolo; it starts out as a large jelly roll of pasta wrapped around a delicious spinach and ham filling, wrapped in cheesecloth and boiled, then when cold, sliced, sauced, and briefly browned in a hot oven. It’s a marvelous dish for a buffet table, quite as captivating in flavor as it is in appearance.
For 6 servings
Tomato Sauce with Onion and Butter, ½ the recipe's quantity
FOR THE FILLING
2 pounds fresh spinach OR 2 ten-ounce packages frozen leaf spinach, thawed
Salt
2 tablespoons onion chopped very fine
3 tablespoons butter
3 tablespoons prosciutto chopped fine
1 heaping cup fresh ricotta
1 cup freshly grated parmigiano-reggiano cheese
Whole nutmeg
1 egg yolk
FOR THE PASTA
Homemade yellow pasta dough, made by the machine method, OR by the hand-rolled method, using 3 large eggs and approximately 1⅔ cups unbleached flour
Cheesecloth
Salt
Béchamel Sauce, using 1 cup milk, 2 tablespoons butter, 1½ tablespoons flour, and ⅛ teaspoon