Baked Cannelloni: New Food Friday Part 2

Whine whine whine!  This recipe has a lot of instructions to type.  Awwwww...I don't wanna type 'em all up...

Yeah, that's why today's post is REALLY the recipe I made last Friday.  Aside from the Nutella cookies.  Which were good.  Mmmm...I want some more of those.  Actually...I want more of this stuff!!  So this first picture is the picture from the Taste of Home magazine.  This is what it was supposed to look like:

This is what MINE looked like:

You'll notice that the innards are a little lighter in mine...I didn't use as much meat in mine.  I'll explain after the recipe.  Don't get me wrong...I thought it was still pretty darn tasty, but next time I think I'll add more meat.  That being said, here's the recipe that took me a week to type up:
Baked Cannelloni
Adapted from: Taste of Home

2 TBSP olive oil
dried minced onion (rehydrated)
2 oz mushrooms, finely chopped
1 pkg. (19 oz)  Italian sausage
6 TBSP butter
6 TBSP flour
3 cups milk (not skim)
12 oz. mozzarella cheese, cubed or shredded
2 egg yolks
12 cannelloni pasta shells
1/2 cup mozzarella cheese, grated
1/4 cup Parmesan cheese, shredded
1 tsp dried oregano

For the filling:
1- In a large skillet over medium heat, add olive oil, onion and mushrooms.  Cook for 5 minutes, allowing the onion to soften and the mushrooms to release liquid.
2- Once most of the liquid has dissipated, add sausage, crumbling it with a wooden spoon into small pieces as it cooks.  Stir and cook all ingredients until the onion is softened and the sausage is no longer pink and is starting to brown.  Set aside.
For The Bechamel Sauce:
1- Melt butter in a medium sauce pan over medium heat.  Add flour and stir until well incorporated.  Slowly, add milk and whisk together until smooth.  Continues whisking until sauce comes to a slow boil and starts to thicken.  Stir half this sauce into the sausage mixture.  Reserve the other half to pour on top of the cannelloni.  Add cubed mozzarella to the sausage and sauce mixture and continue stirring, while slowly whisking in the egg yolks; mix to combine; cover and set aside.
Assembly:
1- Cook pasta according to package directions; rinse under cold water and reserve, being careful to keep the pasta from breaking.
2- Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.  Spread 3/4 of the reserved bechamel sauce on the bottom of a 9x13 oiled baking dish. Spoon filling into each pasta tube.  Start from one end and use your finger to push the filling all the way through. (Yeah...we'll talk about this later.  Read on...)
3- Nestle the cannelloni in the sauce and cover with remaining bechamel sauce.  Top with the mozzarella and Parmesan cheese and a sprinkling of oregano.  
4- Bake in preheated oven for 45 minutes or until heated through and cheese starts to turn golden.  Remove from oven, let stand for 5 minutes before serving.

All right.  Time for Susan's interpretation of the above recipe.  

First.  "This recipe is brought to you by Johnsonville".  No really.  It was.  At the Taste of Home show they advertise for their sponsor's SHAMELESSLY.  The actual recipe in the magazine says "1 pkg. Johnsonville Italian Sausage Links; removed from casing".  Guess what?!  Any sausage will do!  The sausage I made this with is from Winco...and when Joe and I discovered it...we were in love.  It's SUPER tasty and we use it for pretty much every recipe that calls for sausage:

I've never found it anywhere else, but that doesn't bother me.  I do 90% of my grocery shopping at Winco anyway.  So yeah.  I used this sausage and it was 3 oz shy of what the recipe calls for.  Good thing I read directions carefully.  Duh.  As I mentioned before...I'd add more meat the next time I make it. :)

Next.  I hate mushrooms.  And before you get up in my face (computer screen?) about how I should try it before I say I hate it, I have.  So back off. I think mushrooms are nasty.  So I left them out of half my recipe (Joe ate the half with the mushrooms) and that could be part of the reason ((probably IS) my cannelloni's are super cheesy.

Third.  Cannelloni pasta?  What the crap is that?  Where on earth do you buy it?  I couldn't find it...so I used (insert triumphant music here) Manicotti noodles and guess what?!  They worked perfectly. Huzzah.

Fourth. "Spoon filling into each pasta tube.  Start from one end and use your finger to push the filling all the way through"????

I learned this snazzy trick:

Step one - cook the manicotti noodles and drain:

Step two - cut the noodles down one side:

Step three - spoon filling into noodle:

Step four - fold noodle over the filling and set in pan seam side down.

SOOOOOOO much easier then that "push the filling" nonsense.

Last bit of interpretation.  That whole bake 45 minutes or until heated through should probably just say, until heated through.  The top of my cannelloni looks a LOT darker than the one from the magazine.  I kind of like the cheese brown, so it didn't hurt my feelings at all...but I was somewhat surprised when I opened the oven to see that.

So there you have it!  Baked Cannelloni!  It's not nearly as complicated as it looks at first.  And it's super good!  Tastes super good if you have Nutella cookies to eat after....just sayin'.