Free Form Cheese and Pumpkin Cannelloni

Lasagna sheets, they're fantastic to make lasagna, but I also use them to make my free-form cannelloni. This is my pumpkin and cheese cannelloni. It is super delicious. You can also do a really basic version with just spinach and the cheese. So for our spinach, I like to use English spinach. You can see it's heartier, deeper in color. It's full of flavor, and you can see there's a little bit of water in there. That's okay, because we're going to wilt this in a pan. So get your pan really hot, and I'll add a good glug of olive oil, about a tablespoon's worth. And once that's really hot, I'm going to start by adding in my spinach, followed by my garlic, because I don't want my garlic to burn. We just want that garlic to perfume our gorgeous spinach. So that's about one bunch of English spinach. To that, we'll add a pinch of salt and some freshly cracked pepper. Now I'll just give that a quick toss, and this takes no time at all to start wilting, particularly if that pan's really hot. A clove of garlic. And again, we'll just toss that. And as you can see, that cooks down so fast. Now while we're still over here at the pots and pans, let's have a look at a sauce that I've made. Just a very basic tomato sauce. It's got garlic, lots of olive oil, and a can of crushed tomatoes. Have a look at this spinach. It's completely wilted down. There's no liquid, and I've just turned the heat off just to allow that to cool slightly while we start making our delicious ricotta mixture. So in a bowl, some lovely ricotta. I've got buffalo ricotta here, which is extra creamy and delicate. So we'll add one and a half of these tubs straight into the bowl, and the other half and the rest of this does not get wasted. I just love ricotta on ham or prosciutto sandwiches. So that's for tomorrow. And to make this extra cheesy, I love stretchy artella. This is strips of mozzarella in cream, and it gives it a lovely finish. And as you bite into it, you're going to have those long little stringy bits of mozzarella that we all love. So we'll add a generous amount of that in. Look at that. That is just pure deliciousness right there. To this, we'll add some Parmesan cheese, just some grated Parmesan. And that's the three cheeses that I think are a must for a cannelloni. A pinch of nutmeg and the zest of half a lemon. I'll also add a pinch of salt, and that's the base. So we'll just break all of this cheese up with the back of our spoon and ensure that those mozzarella strips are mixed in nicely. All right, we'll pop that to the side. Finally, let's mash our pumpkin. So just with a fork. This is super tender, and we're just going to mash that because I don't want it to be too chunky and it needs to spread onto our lasagna sheet. So just using the back of a fork, break that up just so they're not all chunky bits. Okay, quite happy with that. So we'll grab our lasagna sheets and just really carefully fold them out and place them onto our bench. Just make yourself lots of space. Start with three sheets and open them up. Just flatten them out. And I like to start with the pumpkin. So a little bit of pumpkin on one side. And we'll spread that out. And just leave yourself a bit of a border because as we wrap, the mixture is going to fold on top of itself. Our spinach, that's cooled down slightly. We'll add a little bit of spinach to the centre. And the all-important cheese. Be generous with it. We'll add a few dollops to both sides. And then just grab a little knife and spread that out just so all of those flavours mingle. And now we roll. So we'll just start on the bottom and slowly roll up. And then you've got one gorgeous, giant and generous Cataloni. So I'm going to make a few more of these and then we can start placing them into our baking dish. All right, our giant Catalonis are ready to go. So we can arrange them into our dish. So I've got a large baking dish, wide enough so it fits the Catalonis nice and snug. I've got some olive oil and I'm just using my hands just to spread that so they don't stick too much. And before you start arranging them in the dish, I recommend adding about a quarter of this mixture. Should do it. And spread the tomato sauce so it completely covers it. There's nothing worse than extra dry Cataloni. You want it to be slightly saucy so make sure that that's spread on the bottom. You also don't want it to catch. Next, we'll grab our Cataloni and I've got seam side down and we just place them into the sauce. So just be really careful with them because they are quite full. And just bring them together. And the last one, just there, we'll grab our remaining sauce and we'll just cover all of the Cataloni. Just using the back of your wooden spoon, spread that out so it covers it nice. Great. Now, we need some more cheese. So parmesan, we'll sprinkle some over the top. There we go. Another little splash of olive oil. Just particularly on those sides there so they don't dry out. And I like to place a loose sheet of foil over the top and this is going to cook for about 30 minutes. Then I'll take the foil off and cook it for a further 20 minutes just so that cheese goes nice and golden. It is out of the oven. It smells so good. And I love how sticky it gets on the top, particularly when you take that foil off for the last 20 minutes so it dries up slightly and that cheese melts and becomes quite gooey. Now, I'm going to serve a generous portion. So we'll just dig in here and we'll just scoop this out. You can see how much they swell as they cook too. And we'll place that onto our plate. And I love to serve this as is with just a lovely simple salad, just mesclun leaves on the side, a little bit of salt and some extra virgin olive oil to tie it all together. Now, let's have a look inside this so we can see all that yummy, fluffy cheese. I'm going to cut straight down the centre. Ooh. And have a look at that delicious cheese, the pumpkin. Better have a little taste. Mm. Mm. All of those flavours go so well together. And what's a cannelloni without lashings of fluffy ricotta? And that stretchier teller really takes it to the next level.