CANNELLONI WITH CHICKEN AND MUSHROOMS

This is a delicious recipe to have for a celebration meal. It takes a bit to prepare, but the good thing about it is that once you have the cannelloni to the step where you have stuffed the meat into the shells or rolled the cannelloni or fresh lasagna sheets, you can freeze them and the next time you only need to make the bechamel sauce before putting them in the oven to serve. This recipe makes between 30 and 40 cannelloni. I get the rolled cannelloni and put them on a flat tray in the freezer and when they are frozen you can put them in a bag and get out only the ones you want to use. Also, this last time, I put too many in the gratin dish, and the sauce didn't have enough space in between the cannelloni to get through, and they turned out a bit too dry. The above photo is from a previous time, and this is what they should look like.

Ingredients
20 g dried mushrooms
100 g Emmental cheese, grated (or use any other combination of cheeses)
30 g dried mushrooms (I usually use dry porcini or dry mixed forest, or a mixture of both)
60 ml warm water
300 g mixed fresh mushrooms, cut into big chunks
100 ml olive oil
300 g onion, cut into big pieces
2 cloves of garlic, chopped
1000 g skinless, boneless chicken meat (breast, thigh, or a mixture of both), cut into 3 cm cubes
1 teaspoon salt
A good grind of freshly ground black pepper
1 bay leaf
1 ripe tomato, quartered
100 ml brandy
90 g pâté
100 g crème fraîche
1 tablespoon flour, mixed with 3 tablespoons of the mushroom soaking water
35-40 cannelloni sheets, cannelloni tubes or fresh lasagna sheets
Béchamel sauce (For a tray of about 20 cannelloni)

80 g butter
80 g flour
1 litre milk
1 teaspoon salt
A good grind of freshly ground black pepper
a pinch of ground nutmeg (optional)
1 tsp dried mushroom powder
6 tablespoons tomato passata

Preparation steps
Place 20 g dried mushrooms in a spice or coffee grinder and grind until it has a powder consistency. Set aside.
Put 30 g dried mushrooms and 60 g lukewarm water in a bowl. Set aside.
Place the oil, onion and garlic in a big frying pan and sauté for 10 min over medium high heat. Stir to make sure that it doesn't stick to the bottom.
Add the chicken, salt, pepper, bay leaf, fresh mushrooms and tomato and sauté 10 more minutes. 
Add the brandy and the hydrated mushrooms (reserving the soaking water) and sauté in a very low heat for about 20 min. or until most of the liquid has evaporated and the chicken has just turned golden brown. Remove the bay leaf.

Add the foie and crème fraîche and mix well with the other ingredients in the frying pan. Add the flour, mixed with the reserved soaking water from the mushrooms, and reduce to a thick sauce, about 5 minutes. (You want to make sure they are not too dry!)

Pour the mixture into the mixing bowl of food processor and puree to a very fine consistency. (The first couple of times I made this recipe, I left the mixture a bit more chunky, see first picture)

 

Pour the filling into a piping bag (if you are using cannelloni tubes) or put back into the frying pan and leave to cool for approx. 1 hour.
If using uncooked cannelloni, soak them in water to soften them. If they need cooking, boil them in a pot. In both cases, drain well and place on a kitchen towel. If you are using fresh lasagna sheets, cut them into three sections. Set aside. 

Once the mixture has cooled, fill the cannelloni with it. 

Place them in a gratin dish and set aside. 

Preheat the oven to 220°C.
Making the bechamel sauce (it should have a light pouring consistency, not too thick) 

Sieve the flour through a sieve. This step is very important so that there are no lumps.

Heat a litre of milk in a saucepan over medium heat for 4-5 minutes without boiling. This step is to speed up the process of preparing the sauce.

Put the butter in another saucepan and heat it over a low heat until it melts, it should turn a hazelnut colour and will foam a little then add the sifted flour. 

Let it mix until it forms small golden lumps. This is very important because if the flour is raw, the béchamel sauce will taste too much like flour and that is not what we want. 

Stir the flour well with the butter with a wooden spoon until it forms a ball. Pour half of the hot milk into the saucepan with the flour and butter. Add salt, pepper to taste and a little ground nutmeg and the powdered mushrooms.

Stir continuously with a whisk (5-6 minutes). Check the temperature and gradually add the rest of the hot milk as it thickens. At this stage it is best to keep it to a minimum. The mixture will be homogeneous and, most importantly, free of lumps.

If you don't have this sauce under control and you have lumps, you can fix it with a touch of a blender. If it is too thick add a little more milk, a touch of the blender and it will have the desired texture. This way you will have a perfect béchamel sauce.

Add the tomato passata on top of the cannelloni. Pour the béchamel sauce on top and sprinkle with the reserved grated cheese.

Bake in the lower part of the oven for 15 min (220°C). Then turn on the grill and gratin for 5 minutes (220°C) or until golden brown. Serve immediately.

Serves 6-8 as an entrée.

 

This is a photo of the cannelloni using the more chunky stuffing mix.

You can see on the photo at the back that in that instance the cannelloni where a bit too dry. I put too many in the same platter.