Recipe!

I happened to mention one of my culinary creations (of which there are not that many!) on the show recently and our Pat in Halifax asked if I could give her the recipe. SO, I thought I'd bung it on the blog as well! It's my recipe for Cannelloni using chicken and ham, so here goes......

You will need the following:

1 x large oven dish
200 gms chicken (leftovers from the Sunday roast are ideal)
100 gms cooked ham
Large handful of spinach
6 - 8 button mushrooms
3 cloves of garlic
Tarragon
2 tins of Campbell's condensed mushroom soup
Glass of white wine
12 cannelloni tubes
Generous amount of grated cheddar (mozarella or Swiss gruyere depending on taste and preference)
Dollop of olive oil!

The method:

Slice the mushrooms and arrange them evenly on the bottom of the oven dish. Finely chop the garlic (or use 2 teaspoons of "Lazy Garlic") and sprinkle it evenly over the mushrooms. Splash the olive oil into the oven dish. Wash and finely chop the spinach and scatter it over the mushrooms and garlic so it covers the base. Put the dish to one side for the moment.

Next, if the chicken you have is uncooked, boil it in a pan of water until thoroughly cooked. Don't fry it as you will need to chop it up finely. So, chop the chicken pieces up as finely as you can and do the same to the ham. Pop them into a mixing bowl. Then add the contents of a tin of condensed mushroom soup to the bowl and add a little wine (fill the empty can to a quarter as a rough guide). You could also use milk instead of wine at this stage, but I like to use wine wherever possible! Sprinkle a generous amount of tarragon over the contents and mix it all up. Again, I like to use loads of tarragon cos I love it but it's not to everyone's taste in copious quantities.

Now, the messy bit! You now need to fill all the cannelloni tubes with the mixture, taking care not to crack any of them. Place them in the oven dish on top of your mushroom/spinach base about half an inch apart.

Into a small saucepan, poor the contents of the second can of condensed mushroon soup and swill the remainder of the contents with about half to three quarters of the can filled with white wine and add that to the saucepan. Stir over a gentle heat and then pour over the cannelloni tubes. Finally, grate the cheese and sprinkle it generously over the sauce and pop the dish in a pre-heated oven at 200 C for about 40 minutes or until the top is all nicely golden brown.. When cooked, lift it out of the oven, leave to stand for about 10 minutes and serve! The dish should serve 4 people of medium appetites (3 tubes each) or 3 hungry folk with 4 tubes each!

Enjoy! Let me know if you try it and what you think of the result. Just call me Galloping Carrington.....my recipes are guaranteed to give you the trots!