VEGETARIAN COOK BOOK

Large Saucepan With A Lid

Ovenware dish about 12 Inehesl30 em long, 10 Inehesl25 em wide and 21h Inehesl6 em deep

• METHOD .

Make the filling. Pick over the spinach, removing any weeds or damaged leaves, and wash, twice if necessary. Pack into the saucepan with a lid and add % teaspoon salt and 2 tablespoons water. Cover and set over medium heat for 4 minutes; stir and cook 2-3 minutes more or until the spinach is submerged in juice and tender. Drain and press out surplus liquid with the back of a spoon. Chop finely.

2 Grate the Parmesan. Peel and finely chop the garlic. Fry the garlic in the oil over medium heat for 20-30 seconds or until beginning to change colour. Remove from the heat and stir in the spinach. Allow tocool fora moment or two. Loosen the soft cheese with a fork if necessary and transfer to a bowl. Add and beat in the spinach and Parmesan. If made in advance, leave to cool, cover and store in the refrigerator.

3 Make the tomato sauce. Peel and chop the tomatoes, discarding the hard cores. Peel and finely chop the onion and garlic. Trim the parsley stems, wash the parsley, blot dry with kitchen paper and chop finely. Fry the onion in the oil over low heat, turning often, for 8-10 minutes or until soft but not brown. Add the garlic and fry for 3-4 minutes more. Add the tomatoes, season lightly with salt and more generously with pepper and continue frying for 7-10 minutes, pressing the tomato flesh against the bottom of the pan until it is Iiquified. Stir in the sugar and tomato puree. Simmer for 25 minutes or until thick, then stir in the chopped parsley. As with the filling, if made in advance, allow to cool. cover and put into the refrigerator.

4 To assemble the cannelloni, spread a third of the tomato sauce over the bottom of the ovenware dish. Stuff the pasta. This is fiddly and takes a little time. Use the point of a knife to push the spinach into the pipes: hold them overa plate in case the filling falls out at the otherend. Put each filled pipe into the ovenware dish. When all the filling is used, pour the rest of the tomato sauce over the top.

5 Heat but do not boil the milk with the bayleaf, then remove from the heat and leave for 5-10 minutes to infuse. Pre-heat the oven to 400°F, 200°C, Gas Mark 6. Make the cheese sauce. Coarsely grate the Gruyere and the Parmesan. Melt the butter overlow heat and add the flour. Stir until amalgamated, taking care not to let the mixture brown. Remove the bayleaffrom the milk and pourthe milk slowly into the butter and flour mixture, stirring continuously. Keep stirring until the sauce is thick. Allow to simmer for 4-5 minutes. Removefrom the heat. Stir in a little saltand pepper, the Gruyere and most ofthe Parmesan (reserve some of the latter to sprinkle over the top).

6 Pour the cheese sauce over the cannelloni, taking care to cover the whole dish: if any of the pasta is left uncovered it will brown and become tough. Sprinkle the rest of the Parmesan over the top and bake in the oven for 15-20 minutes or until lightly browned.

There are several main types of pastry and any number of variations within the different types. The most generally useful, however, since it is used for tarts, quiches and some sorts of pie, is shortcrust, which is not supposed to rise but should be crisp and melting. Another kind, flaky pastry, is rolled several times with extra fat spread between the layers, which causes it to puff up; puff pastry is similar but with all the fat added between the layers, which makes it even puffier. A version of this is Greek filo pastry, which is paper-thin and layered with melted butter or oil rather than solid fat. The fact that an unsaturated oil can be used and its thinness, which means that there is altogether less of it, make it a healthier and less fattening alternative to ordinary pastry. However, to prepare it from scratch at home requires practice, and even in Greece it is customarily bought ready-made. I have included a recipe for it in Parties and Dinner-parties (see page 145); for the dishes in this chapter you need shortcrust or flaky pastry.

People think of even ordinary shortcrust pastry as difficult to make. This is chiefly for two reasons: that they find it hard to roll out, and that it becomes soggy when baked underneath moist fillings. The problem of rolling out varies according to the kind of flouryou use. With white or a mixture of wholemeal and white, the dough tends to be sticky because the fat becomes warmer as it is worked. The solution is to keep it cold: it should be made with fat straight from the refrigerator and very cold water, and chilled for 20-30 minutes before rolling. With unmixed wholmeal flour, on the other hand, the difficulty is that the dough crumbles. This is less easy to remedy than stickiness. Temperature is no help - in fact, chilling the dough before rolling makes itworse (though you should still make it with cold butter and water).

The answer lies in the composition of the dough: whereas shortcrust pastry is customarily made with a mixture of butter and otherfat and a proportion of halfas much fat as flour, if you want cohesive wholemeal dough you should use (I am afraid) only butter, and add a little oil. I have tried other possibilities, including using an egg, which works but gives a rather more solid, less 'short' result. I have also given a recipe for flaky pastry, which is mixed with cream and, provided that it is kept cool, infallibly rolls out very easily: it is ideal for pasties and the tops ofpies, but notfortarts because it cannot successfully be 'blind-baked'.

'Blind-baking' (or partly baking) pastry is the answer to the problem of keeping it crisp under fillings. The usual method involves covering the pastry with aluminium foil so that it does not brown and preventing it from rising with rice or beans, which afterwards have to be thrown away (if it were not prebaked, the filling would serve the same purpose). The pastry is then baked for a short time before the filling is added. The drawbacks to this are the waste of rice or beans and the fact that you have to heat the oven for longer than would otherwise be necessary. Obviously there is no way round prolonged use of the oven and I can only say that the result is worth it. In my experience, however, the rice or beans are not really essential, at any rate in the case of wholemeal pastry, which rises very little if at all. (For those who make pastry regularly, ceramic 'baking beans' are"available.) Directions for blind-baking are given with the recipes.

Although I assume that most people will want to make wholemeal pastry, I have given a recipe for conventional shortcrust using halfwholemeal and halfwhite flour, because fortwo items in particular (Pecan Pie and Polly's Chestnut Tarts with Hazelnut Pastry: see pages 141 and 153) I think the lightercrust is more suitable; you can also use it as an alternative for any of the recipes in this chapter.

Generally, pastry is crisper if made with plain rather than self-raisingflour (the exception ischeese pastry: see page 144). The dough can be made ahead oftime - the previous day if you wish. Wrap it in foodwrap and store it in the refrigerator.. You will need to allow a little time for it to soften before rolling it out: if it contains a mixture offlours, roll it while it is still fairly firm, as it would have been if it had been chilled; if it has been prepared entirely with wholemeal flour, leave it until it is as soft as when it was made.

You need slightly more liquid with wholemeal than with mixed flours.