Panzanella
MasterChef NZ winner Aaron Brunet shares his Panzanella recipe to breathe new life into stale bread.
Cannelloni
This is ideal as an entrée (one or two cannelloni per person) or as a main, depending on the size of your appetite!
Don’t lose track while you’re cooking, click on an ingredient or step to tick it off so you know where you are up to.
Ingredients
- 250g Quality Mark beef mince
- 1 onion, finely chopped
- 1 garlic clove, crushed
- 400g canned tomatoes, diced
- 1 tsbp oregano
- 1 tbsp lemon thyme
- 250g cottage cheese
- 1/2 cup parmesan cheese, grated
- Handful basil leaves, chopped
- 2 large lasagna sheets
Cheese sauce
- 2 tbsp butter
- 1 tbsp white flour
- 1 cup milk
- 1/2 cup grated parmesan cheese
Method
- Preheat oven to 180°C.
- Fry onion in a dash of oil until soft and transparent.
- Add mince and brown well, ensuring that you break up any large pieces.
- Add garlic, tomatoes and dried herbs and stir well.Remove from heat and leave to cool.
- Mix ricotta with the first measure of Parmesan cheese and half of the fresh basil.
- Season with salt and pepper, then combine with cooled mince mixture.
- Oil a baking dish and take a few spoonfuls of mixture to dot around the baking dish.
- Take a sheet of pasta and dot spoonfuls of the mixture along one edge, and roll over to form a loose tube shape.
- Place tube in the baking dish and repeat until all pasta sheets are used and baking dish is full.
- If you have leftover mixture, keep it warm and use to line your plates when serving up, or if you’d rather not, simply spoon over the cannelloni in the baking dish.
- Brush cannelloni with olive oil and bake for 10–15 minutes until golden.
- While baking cannelloni, make a light cheese sauce.
- In a pan melt butter, then stir in flour to make a paste.
- Add milk and stir with a whisk until well combined.
- Add cheese and stir over a gentle heat until sauce is thickened and smooth.
- If you’d like to thin the sauce a little, simply add a little more milk and stir until combined.
- Serve cannelloni on individual plates, drizzled with cheese sauce and garnished with remaining fresh basil.