Meat and foie cannelloni with white truffle aroma

We can already smell the Christmas season, and many of us can't imagine it without those family meals full of delicious dishes and cheerful conversations. Cannelloni are an almost obligatory dish in many homes, so today Carolina, author of La Cocina de Carolina , has our mouths watering with some meat cannelloni with a very special touch. You'll definitely want to take note, because she makes an adaptation of the traditional meat cannelloni that you'll love!

Christmas is coming and we are sure that more than one of you will already be dreaming of that plate of gratin cannelloni that your grandmother or mother prepares for you. This year we propose a cannelloni recipe with a different touch, we have added duck foie gras and we will also flavour them with white truffle salt and a bechamel made with truffle butter . Exquisiteness in its purest form.

We suggest you prepare the pasta yourself. In the recipe we have combined spelt flour and wheat flour, but you can replace the spelt part with durum wheat semolina or wheat flour, we leave it up to you - the point is to prepare the pasta at home, once you start making it you will never buy fresh pasta again.

Ingredients (for 6 people)

For fresh pasta

• 200 g spelt flour
• 200 g of wheat flour
• 4 eggs
• A pinch of salt

For the filling

• 250 g minced beef
• 1 can of duck foie gras
• 150 g onion, finely chopped
• 200 g chopped mushrooms
• Extra virgin olive oil
• Truffled salt
• Freshly ground salt and pepper

For the bechamel topping

• 1 liter of whole milk
• 70 gr of truffle butter (or standard if we don't want to give it that touch)
• 70 gr of flour
• Salt, pepper and nutmeg
• Parmesan cheese powder

Preparation of foie and truffle cannelloni

We prepare our homemade pasta sheets for cannelloni:

To do this, mix the flours well with the eggs and a pinch of salt. I recommend that you do this on a clean kitchen surface. Make a mound with the flour and make a hole in the centre where you pour the eggs. With the help of a fork, gently beat the eggs, adding flour from the sides little by little until you can knead it with your hands and end up with a ball of dough. Wrap it in cling film and let it rest in the fridge for half an hour.

Imperia pasta machine

Once it has rested, we will stretch the pasta with our Imperia pasta machine, always starting with the widest thickness and going down one by one to the second thinnest in the case of cannelloni.

Once we have our pasta sheets stretched out, we cut them into squares or rectangles to form the cannelloni. We set aside each sheet of pasta, separating it with cling film (we can keep the dough for a day in the fridge and a couple of months in the freezer).

For the cannelloni filling:

Sauté the onion in a little olive oil over medium-low heat. When it is transparent, add the chopped mushrooms and sauté for a couple of minutes.
Add the minced meat and season with salt and white truffle . When it starts to brown slightly, add the duck foie gras and leave for a couple of minutes until it is well done.

For the bechamel:

We start by preparing a roux, which is a mixture of butter and flour in equal parts in a pan over medium heat. We will mix them well with a whisk until it starts to take on a light brown colour, then we will add the milk little by little, stirring constantly, and we will leave it on a low heat for about ten minutes, stirring occasionally. Finally, we will add salt and white pepper to taste and a pinch of nutmeg.

Add a couple of tablespoons to the cannelloni filling and mix well with the meat. Set the rest aside.

Cook the cannelloni pasta in plenty of boiling salted water. Remove it before it is completely cooked, thinking that it will finish cooking in the oven when gratinating the cannelloni.

Le Creuset Non-Stick Oven Tray

We fill the cooked pasta sheets with a couple of tablespoons of the meat filling and roll them up to form the cannelloni.

We place them side by side on a non-stick oven tray and pour the rest of the bechamel on top, sprinkle with the powdered Parmesan cheese and bake for about 5-10 minutes in the upper part of the oven preheated to 200ºC with the grill on.