No matter how much you insist on following your grandmother’s recipe, they are not as tasty or with the same consistency. They collapse just by touching them and you don’t understand why. Well, it will be because you are doing something wrong.
There are only a few days left for cannelloni to become the main dish on Catalan tables, specifically on December 26 to celebrate San Esteban. If you want to know how to improve your recipe so you don’t fail again in front of your guests, take a look at the 5 mistakes you can’t make.
One of the biggest sacrileges that Carles Tejedor, a chef who triumphs in Barcelona with concepts as diverse as the gastronomic proposal of Sofía Be So or El Nacional, says he has seen, is adding ham, chope or other cuts of sausages to the recipe.
“Good cannelloni should be prepared with beef, pork and chicken,” says the chef, who recommends roasting each type of meat separately since it requires different cooking points.
If you wonder why your cannelloni crumbles when serving or eating them, here is the answer. The secret to preventing it from happening again is not to overcook the pasta because “it will continue to cook when you add the béchamel,” says Tejedor.
The formula for making the pasta perfect is explained to us by chef Sergi de Meia, from the restaurant of the same name in Barcelona: “the best thing is to boil it for as long as it takes, cool it in ice water and finish by stretching it between cotton cloths.”
It is another of the errors that contribute to the cannelloni not acquiring the necessary consistency and ending up collapsing just by touching it. “The bechamel of the filling has to be harder and thicker than that of the gratin,” says Meia.
The ideal is to prepare the filling with “70 grams of flour and 70 grams of butter for each liter of milk,” says the cook, who also gives us the quantities of the bechamel for the gratin: “120 grams of flour and 120 of butter for every liter of milk.”
There are those who use trinkets and, according to de Meia, the result is not the same. “When the cheese is good you can tell,” says the chef.
Although you should not sin by using cheeses with too much personality, such as Parmigiano Reggiano. “You can grate a little to give the cannelloni a touch, but cheeses of this type are best eaten alone. It is enough to use a good melting cheese like Emental,” says Tejedor, who when grilling recommends putting a few drops of butter on top “so that everything is well roasted and much tastier.”
Normally, almost all of us place them on the tray with the closure facing down because it is much more aesthetically pleasing, but this is another of the big mistakes that can end up causing the cannelloni to break.
According to Tejedor, “they must be arranged with the closure facing up or to the side” and, in addition, you must always put a small layer of béchamel under them. “This way they won’t end up sticking to the oven tray,” says the chef.
