Italian cannelloni

Preparation steps

• It starts with the preparation of the dough: knead the dough from the listed ingredients and leave it covered for a few minutes. Cut the dough in half and roll each half thinly into a rectangle. Leave both rectangles on the tablecloth to dry a bit. Meanwhile, prepare the salsa and stuffing
• For the salsa, cut 1/2 small onion into small cubes, fry it in olive oil and add chopped tomatoes (I always use homemade, I prepare basic salsa in the summer and keep it in sterilized jars). Season and try if it suits our taste. Add a little water if necessary. Bring to a short boil, remove from the heat and add the chopped basil and parsley. Basil is a “must have” in this recipe and the recommendation is to use it fresh only (I wasn’t happy with the dried one, it just wasn’t intense enough).
• For the filling, fry 1.5 pieces of larger onion chopped into small cubes in olive oil, add grated carrots and a little celery root. Then add the minced meat and fry until the meat is cooked through. Season (salt, pepper, a little vegeta, sweet and hot peppers powder if desired) and add 1-2 salsas of salsa that we have previously prepared. Boil briefly to make the mixture thick (very important because the cannelloni will be easier to roll, and the filling will not fall out of them), remove from the heat and stir in the chopped parsley and a little chopped rosemary.
• When the dough has dried, each rectangle is divided equally into 10 pieces - rectangles. So, from the total amount of dough we get 20 rectangles, or 20 cannelloni.
• In a large pot, boil water, add a teaspoon of salt and a teaspoon of oil and add 4-5 rectangles and cook them in half. Remove the rectangles on a clean cloth to drain the water. Repeat the process until all the dough is cooked.
• Fill each boiled rectangle with stuffing on 75% of the surface, then roll it up and put it in a tray that we prepare by coating it with olive oil and put 1-2 salsa grabs on the bottom (just enough to cover the bottom of the tray).
• The tray used in the pictures measures 25x35 cm. It is important that the cannelloni agree next to each other, and that there is no space between them.
• Prepare bechamel sauce by heating a cube of butter (20 g) in a pot, add a tablespoon of flour, fry briefly and gradually add milk as needed (approx. 4dl); cook until we get a sauce that should not be too thick, but by no means sparse. Add salt, pepper and grated a little nutmeg
• Pour the bechamel sauce over the cannelloni in a pan, then pour over the rest of the prepared salsa. By no means mix bechamel and salsa because we will get an unattractive pink sauce, but put a layer of bechamel and then a layer of salsa.
• Preheat the oven to 180 ° C-200 ° C and bake the cannelloni for about 20 minutes.