I serve it as a main course as well but would add a vegetable and as you mentioned a salad.

If it was a first course I would do a light fish course for the second.

I would also consider making the cannelloni vegetarian.

Main course with garden salad and crusty bread. I don't see how cannelloni is at all similar to mac and cheese!

I think a lot of those pasta dishes are first course in Italy, but become the main course in the US, largely because Americans like to have lots of food on their plate, and one cannelloni hardly seems like enough, even if there's an entree to follow.

Your version sounds delish!

I find serving multiple courses (excluding a salad or dessert) troublesome when trying to cook small enough quantities for one or two persons, so your cannelloni would be a main course in our house accompanied by a vegetable or a salad.

Salad served after is also a French tradition.

French meals include a salad course after the entree and before dessert.

European-trained chef Karl Guggenmos of Healthy Meals Supreme explains that in France, diners believe that a green salad consumed after a main course can assist with digestion. “Since salads are rich in fiber, they will aid in the digestion of the food eaten before. [Also,] salads will cleanse the palate and prepare the digestive system for dessert,” Guggenmos told HuffPost.

According to executive chef Laetitia Rouabah of Benoit in New York City, “in France, salad is traditionally eaten after the main course, served plain with vinaigrette. Some people say it helps with digestion and is a good source of vitamins.”

However, she also notes that this time-honored dining pattern has become less rigid in recent years, stating that “the French [also] eat salads now as a main course with proteins and vegetables. The timing of when you eat [a salad] shouldn’t have a significant impact on your health as long as the ingredients you are using are healthy overall.”

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/salad-before-after-meal_n_5c34cb89e4b0116c11f0acf4

I meant to post this just on the cooking forum, and so I had to edit it to add that forum. That's where we had the mac & cheese thread.

Anyway, thanks for the responses.

I added Parmesan, mozzarella and asiago cheese to the filling, just because I like it.

It reminds me of mac and cheese because it is pasta with cheese. My version is very different from mac and cheese because I use a marinara sauce, but it is often made with a béchamel sauce instead, which would make it similar to mac and cheese.

I usually have not added sausage to the cannelloni, but I noticed it in several recipes that I found, and it went well with the spinach.

Sorry for the drift.

To me, it's the difference between a formal meal shared with others or in a high end restaurant, and a simple meal at home.

I don't like mac and cheese in general. But I'd take a plate of cheese ravioli . Problem is that most restaurants will serve a dinner sized portion for the primo. I'd prefer a small serving.

In Italy, they are a first course but here they are the main course. Unless I was serving a very Italian dinner, I would use it as the main.

Either but as a starter, a small portion.

I don't get hung up on “authentic” and "supposed to" in my home. Fusion is fine. There is a lot that goes into how some of these traditions form. For instance, in an older home, the oven/keep warm space might rule what gets made for dinner, period. I wouldn't be surprised if traditional notions of which pastas went with which mains match up one couse made on the stove top and the other in the oven. There is some truth to the idea that greens after heavy foods will help things along, but other considerations might be give them something to chew and fill up on while the dinner is being finished, vs. cooking for hours get it while it's hot and the cool dish can wait, among others. Also, with smaller stoves and smaller pots, but larger families, more courses, and smaller portions of any one thing, makes much more sense.

In the past, meat (animal protein) was a luxury for many and the highlight of a meal. If you only had pasta with a few crumbles of meat in it you were poor. And sometimes, in some parts, green vegetables and garden produce were luxuries to highlight, whereas, where I live, at all times of the year, they're staple foods eaten always, and relatively cheap.

Lars, compare the primo course to the Mexican sopa course, which is as likely to be pasta or rice as actual soup.

Being raised Italian and German, I always thought Americans ate the first course because it's an inexpensive pasta that will fill many bellies. Imigration is tough. These foods were tastes of home that can be easily stretched and do not have to include meat. I think it was a practical thing ;^) At the night of the 7 fishes we would see, lasagne, stuffed shells and all the fish with several kinds of salads, desserts and veggies, special occasion that she would save for months to provide. ;^)

Plllg, at my friend's house in Mexico City (where I usually stayed), dinner always had a "sopa" course (which was always rice) before the main course, but I did not want to fill up on the rice. All of his meals were very formal, served by servants in uniforms and with fine china and sterling silverware and crystal. Dinner usually took quite a long time, but I have always been very patient.

I was never allowed in the kitchen in his house, as that was the exclusive domain of the cook.

I've always served cannelloni as a main course with salad and bread. Like other pasta dishes, it can be filling.

Lars, I've always enjoyed the sausage selection at Bristol Farms.

In my family, we make the wrapper for canelloni out of crêpes, not pasta. It can be quite a slog making enough crêpes to fill the dish when you have shrinkage due to little ones swiping a crêpe here and there. Also for us, they are made with ricotta and spinach, béchamel and a dollop of marinara.

Heatheron, I agree with your thinking about why pasta is served as a main here, and in large quantities. I think there is also a labor issue. A proper Italian meal is terribly time intensive.

I've also made cannelloni using crêpes, but I think I like it better with pasta rectangles, which take less time to make. I still do not use béchamel because the milk upsets my stomach, whereas the ricotta cheese does not. When I make it with crêpes, I spread a small amount of marinara sauce on the crêpe before adding the filling, and I think I use less filling. The crêpes I make are extremely thin - thinner than the pasta I make for cannelloni. I did go to #5 on my pasta machine, but I think Mary Ann only went to #4.

I used to make ravioli frequently, but for me it is even more labor intensive than cannelloni, and I do not like it any better. Ravioli does make a nice first course, however, and it's easy to make the portions small.

WoW Lars! That looks AMAZING! It would be a main course here. I've never made pasta from scratch...someday I'd like to try it. I'm with you....I never tried mac n' cheese until I left home....and never acquired a taste for it. I DO like biscuits and gravy.....maybe twice a year.....not a staple in my diet. lol

Main course.

We would eat it as a main course as I wouldn't have room for anything else if it were a first course. I love the stuff. I use the dried tubes, fill with ragu, pour over a tomato sauce and top with bechamel and cheese. I'm not a fan of ricotta & spinach as I find it too bland.

It's true that here, we eat salad after the main, sometimes with the cheese course. Before the pudding.

My husband loves many British things but one he can't tolerate is our habit of eating cheese after the pudding! After half my life in each country, I think i'd vote with the french way of doing it now. Dessert last.

Lars, your meal looks beautiful! It would stand alone as dinner at my table.

I made manicotti with crepes instead of pasta. It is all much the same. It is basically the same mix of ricotta and whatever else but with the crepe instead. When hubs and I married, way back when, I adopted his Italian family's way of doing things. It was all about how grandma did it.

Now, I am grandma and I have added my own tweeks and twitches to how I do things.

I am one of those who prefers to have the entire meal on my plate all at one time. I dont like a raw vegetable salad all by itself and I dont want a bowl of soup before dinner. or a basket of bread. I dont want bites of cheese either before or after dinner.

If I am in a restaurant I always just let others have thier salad and I wil just sit and wait until the other food arrives at the table.

I dislike dining in bits and pieces. Venues such as tapas or dim sum just drive me nuts.

I guess I just dont really like courses of a meal.

I do think that it adds to the pleasure of a meal if it is served with some eye towards the aesthetic and I take pride in plating our dinner in an attractive manner and it is always casual.

You folks who expect to eat in courses do realize that someone does not get to sit down and enjoy their meal because they are busy preparing or serving that next course, to you , the one who gets to sit and enjoy the company. That is another reason that I have never served a meal in courses. I want to sit and enjoy also. I present it to the table in what I feel is a attractive array and you can do whatever you want.

Lars, count me as a one who would consider that to be dinner. You seem to be a wonderful cook!

Islay, ricotta and spinach is not bland if you add Italian sausage and cayenne (or chile de arbol) to it. I used to add prosciutto to it (which is sautéed lightly) and always chili flakes. Kevin won't eat prosciutto, and so I have to add chicken or turkey sausage instead.

I often have salad after the main course, and I started doing this when I was about fourteen. As a child, I always preferred having separate courses, partly because I enjoyed setting the table for them and using as many dishes and silverware as possible. Since my mother had them, I thought they should be used!

Today I still like having meals served in courses, and I generally do the serving. When I cook, I never serve family style, unless there is a huge crowd of people. I have a lot of individual wooden salad bowls from the 1950s and 60s that I like to use, partly because I like the way they look. I make the salads in matching large wooden salad bowls, but I generally do no set the large bowl on the table. I like to keep the dining table top sparse.

I also love tapas, dim sum, and izakaya, although I generally only have these in restaurants.

Salad after dinner in France is, I think, more a home practice. I've rarely encountered it in restaurants. Or is it regional?

A quick British to American English translation of Islay's comment:

Pudding= Dessert.

Not just dessert of what American's call pudding but any dessert - cake or whatever. (Islay, mousse au chocolat would be called chocolate pudding, mousse a la vanille is vanilla pudding. It's the consistency that makes it pudding. Dessert is dessert, whatever it is)

Cannelloni would definitely be the main course if I have to do the cooking.

At home, I usually eat my salad last. Hot food first; salad can wait. And salad is kind of like dessert because I like to add sliced strawberries or halved grapes or cut up orange segments to my salad. Usually dressed with raspberry vinaigrette.

Elmer, thank you for the translation :) Salad is pretty universal in restaurants too. People expect it. It depends on how many courses you order. Cheaper restos will offer you a 2 course combination. Starter and main or main and dessert. 3 courses will be the started, main and dessert. 4 courses will add in the cheese, with or without salad.

Lars I was talking about filling that is only the spinach and ricotta that is frequently served. I would like your additions very much.

I also enjoy multi course meals. But never expect it. I have friends that like to entertain that do not cook. So they compensate by getting a half dozen Costco appetizers. One close friend will set up an oyster bar or a lobster or shrimp boil as long as some of us agree to shuck and help plan. (I have my grandmother large crab pot she borrows). Just inherrited another.

Similarly, i'll do multi course platings for 4-6, but adjust if the guest list increases. I'm never a slave to the kitchen. I enjoy it and like to spoil my friends and family. Something new i've tried, a new ingredient....not ever chips and dips. Though that is fine if i'm a guest. Most have that at home often like humus, salsa, guacamole ....

Pasta, grains, beans, dumplings....starches/carbs, are most always a small second course or a side with the 'main' after small plates and salads. Obviously some exceptions.

Back to the question in Lars original post...in my home it would be a small portion second course of three. Never a main plated meal. I've never make manicotti/cannelloni/quesadilla type dishes because we would pig out the whole pan and feel gross. Because it is so good.

Even ravioli, homemade and thin with better ingredients like lobster, not thick and full of fillers, is a second of three courses. Three small ones.

Our meals with guests are 3-4 hours and casual. The food is background to the most important social engagement friendship and now a missed connection due to covid.

Salads/greens after pasta?, no way in my crowd. Multiple salads are first and fresh. I'm planning a menu right now for 6. I plan for local and seasonal. With 4 distiinct seasons in the NorthEast, the menu changes due to fresh availability. If it moves to 8+ guests, i will serve prepped ahead salads/apps pre-dinner out on the kitchen deck. A help yourself dealio.

I have so many photo files to look back on. This is a bit funny and precious. (i look back For ideas)....July 19th 2018, etc....i must have had a VIP chef friend guest, lol. A watermelon ring, lol. I was teased for days about the preciousness of this one like the edible flowers in ice cubes years ago....

I did serve this early but what's so wrong as a post meal dessert? Fresh and fruity....times are changing as fresh fruits are more common as an ending to a meal.