Magazine Monday: My First Time!

One of my favourite blogs is Cream Puffs in Venice. Yvonne creates dishes I can only dream of, she's a Daring Baker, heck she's one of THE Daring Bakers and she takes the most gorgeous photos of her creations. I can frequently be found drooling over her creations. She's also the creator of Magazine Monday which, according to Yvonne, is more of a self-help tactic than anything else and a way of actually cooking and baking rather than storing recipes for all eternity.

I've been wanting to join in with Magazine Monday for ages. Probably since about.... when it started. But I never quite manage to get myself organised. Yes, I do pick up lots of recipes from magazines and I do get around to cooking an awfully high number of them. I even blog about the majority of them but blogging about them on a Monday eluded me for some time. I made this dish towards the end of last week and knew that, finally, I could join in with.... drumroll please... MAGAZINE MONDAY.

We all enjoyed this pasta dish, my only complaint was that it needed a little more sauce but this is probably due to it being assembled on Thursday night before sitting in the fridge until I cooked it when I got in from work the next night. And as usual, though the recipe says it serves 4 it did my family twice over. I'm sure the purists will be horrified by the simplicity of this recipe but we thought it was fine. I've made cannelloni before and this is the easiest version I've come across and it pleased the palates of the four who sit at my table so, once again, it's a winner for me. Sadly, we were in such a hurry to eat on Friday night that I've just searched my camera and realised that I didn't take any pics so I'll just say that it looked like any other cannelloni dish - pasta tubes, filled, and covered in tomato and cheese.

Baked Chicken Cannelloni

from Australian Table, August 2008

Serves 4

12 cannelloni tubes

1 1/2 cups tomato passata

1/3 cup chicken stock

Chicken filling

500g chicken mince (ground chicken for you Americans and Canadians)

1 cup (200g) ricotta

2 tablespoons olive oil

1 tablespoon chopped parsley

1 cup grated parmesan

1. Cook cannelloni in a large saucepan of boiling, salted water according to packet directions. Drain, rinse under cold water and drain again. Set aside. (Seriously??? I have never done this. I bought the smaller cannelloni tubes because that's what I could get when I raced into the shop. I used the whole packet and because they sat overnight they were appropriately 'soggy' upon serving).

2. Preheat oven to 200C or 180C fan. Grease a 30cm x 20cm ovenproof baking dish. Combine passata and stock in a large jug. Pour half of passata mixture into prepared dish.

3. To make filling, combine chicken mince, ricotta, oil, parsley and half of parmesan in a bowl and season. Fill cannelloni tubes with mince mixture, using a piping bag or teaspoon (I used a ziplock bag and snipped the corner off). Arrange in a single layer in prepared dish and spoon over remaining passata mixture, Sprinkle with remaining parmesan, Bake for 40 minutes, until bubbling and golden.