COURGETTE & RICOTTA CANNELLONI

I have several recipes in my folder that my daughter Arabella will HATE and so whilst she is with her father for the weekend, I thought it was a great opportunity to cook one of them. They mainly involve aubergines, mushrooms and courgettes! Arabella is a great little eater but there are some vegetables that she really moans about.

On Sunday night my gorgeous friend Sophie came for supper and so I dug out this recipe from Olive Magazine, it took just over an hour to cook in total and was very easy.

Ingredients for 4 - 6 people (depending on portion size):

Olive oil
750g courgettes, grated and patted dry on kitchen paper
2 cloves of garlic, crushed
250g ricotta
1 lemon, zested
2 x 400g tins of chopped tomatoes
12 fresh lasagne sheets (around 500g)
200g Parmesan, grated (I ran out so used cheddar cheese as well)

To serve:
Green Salad

Firstly prepare the ingredients by crushing the garlic, zesting the lemon and grating the courgettes. They are very watery so pat well with kitchen roll. It may look like a huge amount of courgettes but they do break down during cooking.

To make the sauce, heat one tablespoon of olive oil in a saucepan and fry half of the garlic for a couple of minutes. Then add the 2 tins of tomatoes and simmer for 15 minutes until thickened.

Meanwhile heat 2 tablespoons of olive oil in another pan and add the courgettes and a big pinch of salt. Fry for 10 minutes, turning frequently. Next add the rest of the garlic and cook for another 2-3 minutes. Finally turn up the heat, to drive off any excess moisture.

While you are frying the courgettes, preheat the oven to 180 C / 160 C fan / gas mark 4.

Cool for a few minutes and then add the lemon zest and ricotta, mix and season well.

Pour boiling water over the lasagne sheets, if they are a bit still and then drain - I basically wiped them dry with kitchen roll and I was scared to break them.

Put half the tomato sauce in a heatproof dish.

Divide the ricotta mix between the sheets and roll up length ways into the cannelloni. Sit the cannelloni on top of the tomato sauce, seam side down. This was much easier and less messy than I was expecting! 

Finally cover with the remaining tomato sauce and cheese. Bake in the oven for 30 minutes and then serve with a green salad.

This was good - much lighter than a meat based cannelloni and lasagne and I loved how fresh it tasted with the hint of lemon. Being the piglet that I am, I could have probably added more cheese but other than that it was perfect just the way it was. It definitely worked well with a green salad and was a great way to have both pasta and vegetables - I wonder if I can persuade Arabella the green is cucumber?!!!