Cannelloni di Portabelli with Red Pepper/Goat Cheese Sauce

This is an example of ingredients dictating dinner. We had a some red bell peppers and a whole bunch of portabello mushrooms. Lindz wanted to do something special for dinner, something Italian. Talk of a pasta dish naturally followed, and the comforting nature of a baked pasta dish appealed to us.

We went to Trader Joe's for various groceries and the other ingredients for our meal. We were also hoping to catch my brother at work. We added things to our cart, and details of the meal appeared in my head. A baked pasta dish during winter demands to be shared, so we asked Bryan over for dinner. The time was around noon when we left the store.

I spent much of the afternoon in the kitchen, and it was a pleasant afternoon indeed. I made some pasta dough (it's pretty standard, but I always use the recipe from a well-used, stained page of Pasta Improvvisata) and put it in the fridge. I blackened some red bell peppers under the broiler and peeled them. I cleaned the portabellos and grabbed my knife, and I soon had a mountain of chopped mushrooms. I sweated them down in my beloved iron deep skillet with a bulb's worth of minced garlic and a few handfuls of frozen spinach. The skillet was actually called a chicken fryer when I bought it, but the item I've hyperlinked to is almost identical. I put the reduced mushroom/garlic/spinach mixture, salted and peppered, in the fridge.

I attached my pasta roller (a birthday gift from Lindz) to the Kitchenaid mixer and took the wad of dough from the fridge. I rolled out a bunch of thin sheets and put them on cookie cooling racks to dry (in the process, reminding myself how little counter space the kitchen has). Proceeding according to Signore Batali's cannelloni technique in Molto Italiano, I boiled a pot of water and prepared an ice bath. I cooked the sheets (each 4" or 5" by 6") and shocked them in the ice bath.

Bryan arrived and was soon sipping a beer at the table, perusing cookbooks. I mixed an egg into the mushroom mixture, and Lindz helped me fill the cannelloni. She placed a nugget of goat cheese on top of the spoonful of mushroom filling on each pasta sheet, and I rolled them up and put them in a baking dish (two baking dishes, actually; we ended up with quite a few). I put the dishes of naked cannelloni in the fridge and turned my attention to the sauce.

I pureed the roasted red peppers in the food processor with a bit of salt and pepper. Lindz suggested that I add the remaining hunk of goat cheese, so into the red vortex it went. The creamy tang was evident in the finished product - very nice. I heated up a saucepan and turned on the oven. I made a roux and added some chicken stock (I had no milk for besciamella), and when it thickened, I added the pepper puree. I hope there's no law against topping cannelloni with veloute instead bechamel.

Lindz toasted some walnuts and made salads for us. We opened a bottle of wine, too - Epicuro Aglianico Beneventano 2004, $5.99 at Trader Joe's. It's a delicious bottle, one for which I'd be happy to pay $15. The pear-Gorgonzola salad dressing also came from The Joe.

I poured the sauce over the two baking dishes of cannelloni (the one pictured above is the more handsome dish, an Emile Henry), grated some Parmiggiano-Reggiano over them, and put them into a 375 degree oven. We ate our salads (baby greens, feta, dried blueberries, toasted walnuts and the dressing), and I pulled the cannelloni out of the oven when it was bubbly, about half an hour.

I was pleased with the results -it was tasty and comforting oven Italian, and it tasted like its ingredients. It also provided a very nice afternoon's activity for me. I'm glad Lindz wanted Italian. Next time, I'll actually go out and get some milk. Besciamella would have been better. We followed dinner with some vanilla Joe-Joe's, and then we watched Annie Hall.