Summer Harvest Vegetarian Canneloni

My hubby is a devoted carnivore, but when we started dating, I was pescatarian - this meant essentially I was vegetarian apart from fish and seafood.  I ate this way for about 5 years and only started eating red and white meat when I was pregnant with my first child, Eloise.

If it were up to hubby we would eat red meat every day of the week - oh maybe 6, and have pork the other day because the man adores a pork roast.  But me, I still love my fish and so many meat dishes is just too heavy for me, let alone it's not really all that healthy!

So last week I went scouring for a way to use up some of the tomatoes, eggplant and silverbeet (spinach) we have going crazy in our vegetable garden, and I found a great recipe on taste.com.au - I tweaked it a little, but I knew it would appeal to the kids as it had pasta and tomatoes in it - it wasn't a predominantly spinach dish, so hubby would be happy and it was veggo, which makes me happy!

It was yummy.  In fact I think this one will be made again, and soon - good to freeze this one and will be a great way to use the produce I have in the garden when I need to make room for my autumn crops.

You can also use non/low fat options in this recipe to make it easy on the waistline too!  As all the veges are in season at present, it's affordable too - so put it on your mealplan for this week!

Serves 6

Ingredients:
3 cups pasta sauce (I used homemade from tomatoes,  carrots, red wine, onion, garlic, basil and oregano and a little tomato paste)
1 large eggplant, sliced
2 leeks, finely sliced
1 bunch silverbeet - stalks cut off and then cut into ribbons
1 large or 2 small clove/s garlic, finely diced or minced
2/3 cup evaporated milk
250g tub ricotta cheese
Fresh pasta sheets (Lasagne) or make your own fresh pasta (I used 2 cups Tipo 00 flour, 2 eggs, 2 tb olive oil and 2 tb warm water)
1/2 cup tasty or mozzarella cheese

Method:
Place eggplant on a baking tray sprayed with canola oil, and bake at 200 degrees for about 10 minutes, until it softens, take out of oven and set aside.

Place 2 tb of olive oil in a frying pan and add the garlic and leeks, fry until leeks become transparent and then add the spinach, if you have a lid for your frypan, put it on and turn the heat down until it wilts. If not, stir until wilts.  Turn heat off and set aside.

Place 1/2 of your pasta sauce in a medium sized baking tray.

Lay out a pasta sheet, or make your pasta into 10-15cm x 10cm lengths.  Cut your eggplant into long strips (I sliced mine in thirds) and lay out on the pasta sheet.  Top with about 3 tb of the leek/spinach mixture and then top again with more eggplant.

Dip a finger into some water and wet the edge of the pasta sheet furthest away from you, roll up the pasta sheet until it's a roll - the water at the end should glue it together.  Place the rolls into the baking tray in the pasta sauce. Continue until you run out of eggplant/spinach/pasta sheets.

Preheat oven to 200 degrees c

Pour over the rest of the pasta sauce.

Mix the evaporated milk and ricotta cheese in a bowl, season with pepper.  Then pour over the canneloni and pasta sauce.

Sprinkle with tasty cheese and then place into the oven for 40-50 minutes until browned on top.  Serve immediately of refrigerate/freeze for later!

Be a Fan

Print this post in friendly format