Spinach and Ricotta Cannelloni

I'm off to uni fairly soon and I've made it my mission to make sure that I at least have a basic understand of how to cook before I go, so last weekend my best friend Sophie and I decided to tackle a Spinach and Ricotta Cannelloni Recipe adapted from this recipe by Jamie Oliver, and we thought we'd share it with you!

Ingredients:
Fry Light
Olive Oil
350g Spinach
1 Onion
2 Cloves of Garlic
800g Chopped Tomatoes (from a tin!)
1 Bay Leaf
Basil
200g Ricotta Cheese
1 Egg
12 Cannelloni Tubes
250g Mozzarella
2 tsp Grated Cheddar
1 Chicken Breast per Person (Optional!)

Step 1: Wilt the Spinach
Spray some Fry Light into a large pan and put the spinach in. Don't worry if it doesn't all fit in at first, spinach wilts down into practically nothing so just keep an eye on it and keep adding more as you can! Add salt and pepper to season as you like it. Once all of the Spinach has wilted, tip it into a large bowl (including all the juices!) and leave it to cool

Step 2: Pre-Heat Your Oven
Pre-heat your oven to 180 Celsius / 350 Fahrenheit

Step 2: Making the Sauce
Dice your onion and garlic (the smaller the better, although we found out that that you could get away with having some rather large chunks) and chop your basil into smaller pieces. Fry the onions until they have started to soften but haven't gone brown, and then add in the garlic, the tins of tomatoes, the bay leaf, the basil and season as you like! Jamie recommends using the zest of a lemon here so you can do that, or add salt or pepper as you prefer. Leave this on a low heat for about 20 minutes to simmer away. The sauce should start to thicken up but if it looks a bit too thick, pour some hot water into one of the leftover cans from the tomatoes and add it to the sauce until you're happy with the consistency

Step 3: Making the Filling
Spoon as much of the spinach as possible without getting the juices everywhere onto a chopping board and shred it into smaller pieces. Then put it back into the bowl with the juices and add in the ricotta, cheddar and the egg - which should be beaten, I think I forgot to mention that... Sorry! Mix it all up until it's the familiar 'Spinach and Ricotta' consistency!

Step 4: The Messy Bit
Now you have to somehow get the filling into the Cannelloni tubes... I found this worked best by putting all the tubes into an oven proof dish, then taking each one individually and using a knife to spread the mixture into the tube. It was a bit of a faff but we eventually got there! Jamie recommends using a piping bag but if you don't have any culinary expertise or common sense like us, then I would recommend skipping on trying it and going straight to using the knife method!

Step 5: Bringing it all together
If you have any leftover filling that won't fit into the tubes like we did, spread it over the top of the cannelloni to make the most of it! Then pour the sauce over the top and spread it out so it's covering equally. Chop the mozzarella into slices and put that on top of the sauce and voila, your cannelloni is assembled!

Step 6: Cook for 35-40 minutes 

(Optional) Step 7: Meat!
We decided that we didn't want to have this as a vegetarian dish, so we grilled some chicken in the George Foreman Grill using fry light to try and make it as healthy as possible! This only took about 5-10 minutes so you have a bit of downtime between the cannelloni going in the oven and having to think about doing the chicken - and by that I mean time to clean up!