Ricotta and Red Chard Canneloni Recipe
My favorite birthday gift this year was a subscription to the Planet Organic service. Here's the rundown: Every week (or however often you prefer) they drop off a grab bag (or bin in this case) of high quality organic produce. You can get 2/3 vegetables + 1/3 fruit or vice versa. We got our second delivery yesterday, and have so far recieved some great produce that I may have ignored when visiting the produce stand down the street. Like baby bok choy for example. I've looked at it many times, wondered what I could do with it, and then moved right on past it. Now it is in my fridge, and I must rise to the occasion. Other items from the two Planet Organic deliveries in the past week included: tiny brown and white clam shell mushrooms (cute and very tasty!), gold beets, very springy looking carrots, red spring onions, asparagus, Haas avocados, mangoes, navel oranges......and red chard. Hence last nights recipe.
If you've ever made manicotti, or stuffed shells, you can swing this one. When all is said and done, alot of the flavor and success in this dish depends on the sauce you use. The recipe just stipulates using a 26-ounce jar of pasta sauce. I whipped up my favorite simple red sauce w/ red pepper flakes for a little kick.
This is one of those recipes where fresh, thinly rolled pasta would have made all the difference in the world. Because I used thick dried pasta, it was a pretty standard Italian-American stuffed pasta affair.
The filling with chard was nice, and the filling didn't call for egg which I remember being in many other stuffed pasta type recipes I have encountered. If I was really motivated I would have also busted out with the fresh ricotta recipe from Michael Chiarello's book (delicious and takes less than 30 minutes)...
The vote on this one: Could be super if you put the time in on it. I would have added a splash of cream to my red sauce, zested a lemon or two in the bottom of the baking dish, rolled my own pasta, and made my own ricotta. Sounds excessive, but I'm sure it could absolutely transform a pedestrian baked pasta dish into something extraordinary.
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Ricotta and Red Chard Canneloni
To feature an actual recipe taken from a cookbook, it is best to request permission from the publisher or author. In the early days on 101 Cookbooks, I would tell people where to find the recipe, but not feature the recipe itself. Eventually I began to request permission to run the actual recipes, but this wasn't one of them. The majority of entries on 101 Cookbooks will have the recipes attached, this just happens to be one of the ones that doesn't. My apologies!
Link: Bon Appetit
