Last Friday night, Pete made this delicious leek and ricotta cannelloni, based on a recipe from Rick Stein’s Food Heroes. It’s a little fiddly, but definitely worth the effort!
Click here for a printable version of this recipe.
- 50g unsalted butter
- 1kg leeks, cleaned and thinly sliced
- 2 cloves garlic, crushed
- 2 teaspoons fresh thyme leaves
- 2 tablespoons water
- 250g fresh ricotta
- 250g fresh lasagne sheets
- 750ml homemade or bottled tomato passata
- salt and pepper to season
Cheese Sauce
- 1 small onion, peeled and halved
- 3 cloves
- 450ml full cream milk
- 1 bay leaf
- ½ teaspoon black peppercorns
- 30g unsalted butter
- 30g plain flour
- 2 tablespoons heavy cream
- 150g provolone piccante, grated
- 1 egg yolk
1. For the cheese sauce, stud the onion with the cloves and add to a pan with the milk, bay leaf and peppercorns. Bring the milk just to a boil and then set it aside for 20 minutes to infuse.
2. For the filling, melt the butter in a large pan and add the leeks, garlic, thyme and water and cook gently, uncovered, for 15 minutes or until the leeks are tender and the excess liquid has evaporated. Transfer to a bowl to cool, then beat in the ricotta and season with salt and pepper.
3. Bring a large pot of water to boil and add the sheets of lasagne, one at a time, then take the pan off the heat and allow to soak for 5 minutes. Drain well and leave to cool.
4. Pour the tomato passata into a large ovenproof dish. Spoon the filling into the lasagne sheets and roll them up snugly. Place the rolls seamside down on top of the passata. Preheat the oven to 200C.
5. Finish the cheese sauce: strain the milk into a bowl. Melt the butter in a small saucepan, add the flour and cook over a medium heat for one minute. Gradually beat in the milk, then bring to a boil, stirring constantly. Simmer the pan very gently, stirring occasionally, until the sauce is thick (about 10 minutes), then remove from the heat and stir in the cream, 75g grated provolone, the egg yolk and season to taste.
6. Pour the sauce over the cannelloni, scatter over the remaining cheese, and bake in the oven for 30 minutes or until golden brown. In the photo below, six of the eight tubes are filled with leek and ricotta, and the remaining two with bolognaise sauce for Small Man.
Fig Jam and Lime Cordial 
Yum that looks delicious. I like the sound of leek and ricotta – must be much ‘lighter’ (in taste) than the more traditional bolognese (?).
It’s definitely getting to be pasta and cannelloni weather nowadays-brrr! Delicious sounding recipe, filing that away for Winter! ;)
A fab canneloni stuffed with ricotta & leeks,..waw!!
A very appetizng & stunning dish!!
MMMMMMMMMMM,….
Thank you all! It was really delicious – the cloves and bay gave the infused white sauce a subtle sweetness that perfectly complemented the leeks!
Okay, this dish looks AMAZING….I am heading to the market to purchase the ingredients, so keep your fingers crossed that this not so great cook can pull this dish off!!!!
Oh….I forgot to mention that I absolutely LOVE your blog!!!!
Thanks for stopping by, Judy! I hope it works out well! :)
So sorry for not bringing you up to date sooner……….FABULOUS……absolutely fabulous your recipe and it came out just like in the photos!
Can’t thank you enough…….and because it worked out so well for me…..I did a WILD thing and made your english muffins yesterday…..and they were FABULOUS!!!!!!! Thank you so much for teaching me that I can make bread…….we are on for trying pizza tomorrow night…..so you know whose recipe I’m using?
Will let you know how it comes out!!!
Hugs,
Judy
Judy, thank you SO much for trying out the recipes and taking the time to leave a comment! You’ve made my day! :)
Have fun with the pizzas! If you don’t have a pizza stone, they work almost as well (and much more easily) on a sheet of parchment on an oven tray, then just put the whole thing in the blazing oven.
And one more thing – once you have the bread/pizza dough down pat, you can do anything with bread!
Thanks again, I’ve got a big smile on my face now.. :D
Wow! What a great dish! Just finished this for dinner. My husband ate 5 of the leek stuffed canelloni tubes (there were 10 in the dish!). I added a cup of mushrooms to the leek and ricotta filling because they were in the fridge and needed to be used up.
I used dry canelloni pasta tubes because i was too pressed for time to boil water and cook sheets. Just stuffed the dry pasta shell with the mix and baked on a bed of passata topped with the cheese sauce. Plenty of moisture in the passata to cook the dry shells.
Very yummy, i will use lasagne sheets as instructed, next time because filling canelloni tubes is a thankless, messy task. Even with a makeshift ziploc piping bag!
Nisha, thank you for letting us know! Serendipitously, Pete made this dish again last night, and it’s just so tasty. Clever Mr Stein for inventing it! I’m glad you enjoyed it – and it’s good to know the pasta tubes cooked through! :)
Am doing a repeat performance tonight with this delicious dish….only I could not find Provolone cheese so I am using a Spanish sheep cheese…..dinner is in the oven, and looking oh so good, my husband licked the cheese sauce pan clean…so I guess it came out as delicious as it looked.
Thank you SO much again for sharing you cooking skills with us all!
You ROCK!!!!
Jude
Judy, you’re very kind, but it is Rick Stein’s recipe, we can’t really take credit for it! :)