Spinach Ricotta Pie

Anna had been raving about this spinach ricotta pie from the Moosewood cookbook that she had made, and when she told me she had just made it again, I figured I had to try it. Coincidentally, I went over to Linnea's house and she made spinach ricotta pie from the Moosewood cookbook while we were there. It was good. I was hooked. Anna sent me the recipe, and I *almost* managed to follow it all the way through. It appears to be a fairly forgiving dish (like most things I cook, it better be forgiving or it isn't going to taste so good), and I ended up putting in spinach, onion, mushrooms, ground beef, and cheddar, which were all things living on the bottom shelf of my fridge that really wanted to be eaten. I meant to put in corn kernels too, but forgot and left them in the freezer. I think you could add anything, its one of those leftover-user-upper dishes, only it tastes good.

The recipe I used was a little too big for the pie crust, 2/3 of the filling fit comfortably. The other third of the filling I turned into little mini crustless quiche-y things, and they're really good. Better than the pie, actually, because they're bite-sized. I recommend making the whole recipe into little mini crustless quiche-y things, they'd be really good as an appetizer or a snack. The cheddar makes it.

Spinach Ricotta Pie - Alex's version
Crust: (use your favorite pie crust, or use this one)
1.25C flour
1/2 tsp salt
3 tbs frozen butter
3 tbs frozen bacon grease
~1/4C cold water

Filling:
3 eggs
3C skim milk ricotta (or any kind of ricotta, I just used skim)
1lb spinach - I used frozen
1 onion
~1tbs olive oil
2C grated cheddar cheese
1/2 tsp salt
6-10 mushrooms, chopped
3oz ground beef, cooked
3 cloves garlic, minced

To make the crust, put the flour and the salt and the butter and the bacon grease into a food processor. Process. Add the water a tablespoon at a time, processing it in between additions, until the dough pinches together. Shape the dough into a ball, wrap with plastic wrap, and refrigerate for at least 15 minutes.

Cook the filling. Sweat the onions in the olive oil, then add the garlic. Then add the mushrooms and spinach, cook until most of the water is out of these. Cook the ground beef. Chop things up until they're at the size you feel like putting into your pie.

Preheat your oven to 375F. Beat the eggs together in a big bowl. Add the ricotta. Mix it around. Add the rest of the stuff, except the cheddar. Mix it all around until it looks homogenous.

Roll out your pie crust, dock it, and bake it until it is just starting to firm up. Then add the filling. Put a generous layer of cheese on top, and pop that sucker in the oven for 40-45 minutes. If the cheese isn't brown on top when its done, stick it under the broil for a minute or so. Ideally, you'll let this cool and set up a bit before you eat it.

If you have extra filling, you can bake it into little mini crustless quiche-y things. Add any leftover cheese into the filling (very important, otherwise these things won't taste cheesy, which is vital to their goodness). Grease a mini muffin pan, and then fill it to the top or overflowing with the extra filling. Bake until they aren't jiggly any more and they smell cheesy and delicious.

So this thing probably takes about an hour and a half end to end. Not the quickest, but it was durn good. Thanks Anna :)

Mussels!

'Nuff said. Go buy a bag of mussels, they tend to come in 2-lb sacks. Take them home. Rinse them until they don't feel sandy on the outsides of the shells anymore. Put them in a big pot. Fill with a cup or so of wine, a can of diced tomatoes, and another cup or two of water or stock. Bring to a boil, add some shallots, some basil, and some corn kernels (frozen is fine). Once the mussels open up, take them off the stove, put in a big dish, and slurp them out of their shells. I guess you could use a fork and be all fancy, but we found they were much tastier if we just slurped them. Then you get more of the broth and stuff too. Yum!

Chocolate Zucchini Cake

Read this first. Testament to how awesome this cake really is.

This recipe is another one taken straight from King Arthur Flour, which I had tried before but forgotten to take pictures. It was so good that I decided to do it a second time, and it was well worth it, as always. The original recipe is here, but I didn't put any chocolate chips in it or on it this time, because I didn't have any. The cake was fine without them, but would have been even better with more chocolate.



In case the King Arthur website ever goes down, I am reprinting the recipe (please don't sue me):

1/2 cup (1 stick, 4 ounces) butter*
1/2 cup (3 1/2 ounces) vegetable oil
1 3/4 cups (12 1/4 ounces) granulated sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 large eggs
1/2 cup (4 ounces) sour cream or yogurt (I used yogurt this time, last time I used sour cream)
2 1/2 cups (10 1/2 ounces) King Arthur Unbleached All-Purpose Flour
3/4 cup (2 1/4 ounce) Dutch-process cocoa
2 teaspoons espresso powder, optional but tasty
2 cups shredded zucchini (about one 10" zucchini, about 12 ounces)
1/2 cup (3 ounces) chocolate chips (didn't use these this time)
1 cup (6 ounces) chocolate chips, for icing (didn't use these this time)

*being lazy, I only used oil.

Preheat the oven to 325°F. Lighlty grease a 9" x 13" pan. (I also made half the recipe with the full amount of zucchini, because I only have a 8x8" pan)

In a large mixing bowl, cream together the butter, oil, sugar, vanilla, baking soda, baking powder, and salt. Beat in the eggs.

Stir in the sour cream or yogurt alternately with the flour. Then add the cocoa and espresso powder, mixing till smooth. Finally, fold in the zucchini and 1/2 cup chocolate chips.

Spoon the batter into the prepared pan. Bake the cake for 30 to 35 minutes, till the top springs back lightly when touched, and it seems set. Slide the cake out of the oven, sprinkle it evenly with the 1 cup chocolate chips, and return it to the oven for 5 minutes, or until a cake tester inserted in the center comes out clean. Remove the cake from the oven, and use a cake spatula or rubber spatula to spread the chocolate chips into a smooth glaze. Cool on a rack. Yield: 24 servings.

Persimmon Pie

While I was up in VT, I got the pleasure of finally seeing Jackie and Alex, and Jackie brought with her many, many persimmons. Apparently, living in California has its benefits, like fruit trees in your backyard. Snow vs fruit trees... snow vs fruit trees... snow vs fruit trees... eh I'll take snow. Anyway, we didn't know what to do with this many persimmons, but decided that persimmon tarts would be the perfect thing. Except, persimmon pie has a much better ring to it. So, we'll call this persimmon pie.

Jackie had never made a pie crust before, so I made her do the work, in the interest of "learning". Or lazy. You choose. We sliced the persimmons into rounds, and peeled them. We weren't sure how much they would break down in the oven, so the first pie we pre-baked before putting in the persimmons and finishing it off. They didn't break down much at all, in fact they were still really solid, so we put them in initially with the second pie, and that worked out too. They taste a little slimy, but they were pretty slimy to begin with, too. Maybe slimy is the wrong word, I mean they tasted good, just kind of slimy. In a good way. They were very pretty tarts, in the end. The persimmons were so sweet on their own that they didn't need much sugar, but we added some lemon juice. That was good too.


Jackie with a pile o' persimmons.

So here is the recipe. Its pretty free-form.

Pie crust
2.5C flour
1 tsp salt
1 stick frozen butter
4-8tbs cold water

Preheat the oven to 350F.

Mix together the flour and salt in a big bowl. Using the big holes of a cheese grater, grate the frozen butter into flour mixture. Use your fingertips to mix it up, squeezing it around, for a minute or so. Start adding the water, a tablespoon at a time, until the dough starts to come together. You don't want it too wet, if you can squeeze it together and it sticks, thats probably wet enough. Pack your dough into two balls, and wrap in plastic wrap and chill for 20-30min. This lets the flour hydrate, or something like that. After 30min take it out and roll it into flat pie crusts. Put these into two pie dishes, and try to make them look pretty. Or you could make a galette, and just fold the edges over the fruit free-form.

It'll take about 12 persimmons to fill two pie crusts, slice them into rounds and then peel them. layer them into the pie crusts, overlapping them enough to make them look pretty. Splash some lemon juice over the persimmons, and sprinkle them with a little sugar if you want. Bake for 10-20min, keep checking until the crust is a little brown on the edges.

Pignoli Cookies

A couple weeks ago, I went up to the North End and had some awesome pine-nut-cookies from an Italian bakery up there. They were pretty great, but I figured I'd never make them. Then I got some almond extract for Christmas, and found a recipe online from King Arthur Flour, and figured, why not. The one problem with these cookies is that they are pretty expensive to make; you have to buy marzipan, pine nuts, almond flour, none of the generic cheap stuff that normally goes into cookies. I couldn't remember if I needed marzipan or almond paste, so I got some of both, and it seems that the difference is that almond paste is way more almond-y, a little too much for my liking. Despite the expensiveness, though, they were delicious!



Pignoli Cookies
1C (9oz) marzipan
1/4C sugar
1/8th tsp salt
1 tsp almond extract (don't use this if you don't like almond flavor, you could use vanilla instead)
1/4tsp lemon extract, or 1/2 tsp lemon zest
1/2C almond flour*
1 egg white
1-1/2C pine nuts

*I couldn't find almond flour, so I ground up a bunch of almonds in a food processor. They didn't get that ground up, but that didn't seem to affect the texture too much. I would imagine that you could just use regular flour, but I didn't test that.

Grease two cookie pans and preheat your oven to 325F.

Break up the marzipan either using the food processor or with your fingers. Add everything else except the pine nuts and use your fingers to mush it around until it is homogeneous. It will be really sticky and goopy. Roll the dough into little balls, and then roll those balls in the pine nuts. Flatten the cookies into cookie-shapes, and pop them in the oven for 22-24 minutes. Enjoy!



This is the texture of the almond "flour" that I ground up. Still pretty nutty, but the cookies didn't taste like they had nuts in them.


Marzipan vs almond paste?


The almond paste


The marzipan oozes out of a tube

California Rolls

Eating California rolls when I eat sushi is just about paramount to sacrilege. Sushi, for me, is about showcasing the freshest, most beautiful, best fish you can get your hands on. So what was I doing playing around with imitation crab?

I don't really know what I was doing. For some reason, I wanted to get some while I was at the store. And then I had it, and the only thing I could think of doing with it was to make sushi. There are two options for a California roll, you can either make a crab-mayo mixture, or you can just put the crabstick into the sushi straight up. I went with the crab-mayo mixture, but next time it'll be just crabstick. If there is a next time... It was still good, though. Rolls of bite-size rice and stuff is always good. So, if you want to try eating sushi but you don't want raw fish, or you happen to have some imitation (or real!) crab to get rid of, here is an excellent way to do it.

California rolls

1C sushi rice
1/4C rice wine vinegar
1/4C white sugar
3 pieces of dried seaweed (nori)
3/4C diced crab meat
2 tbs mayonnaise
sesame seeds
1 avocado
1 cucumber, peeled and seeded

First make the sushi rice. Rinse your rice under cold water a couple times, until the water runs clear, not cloudy. Cook it according to the directions on the package, my rice says to cook 1C of rice with 1-1/3C of water. Once the rice is done, let it cool. Meanwhile, mix the vinegar with the sugar. If you don't have rice vinegar, you can use regular white vinegar, but it is much stronger so don't use too much. Start adding the vinegar mixture to the rice, and fold it in gently, preferably using a wooden spoon. Don't do this in a metal bowl, as the vinegar can react with the metal. Keep adding vinegar and sugar until it tastes about right (you be the judge). I used just about all of it.

Dice the crab meat and mix with the mayo. Stir it up and set it aside. Peel and take the seeds out of the cucumber, then cut into long, thin, slices. Slice the avocado into long, thin, slices. Tear each sheet of nori into half-sheets.

Set up your sushi-rolling station. The rice should be in a big bowl. You need a sushi rolling mat, although a dish towel will work. Since California rolls have the rice on the outside, and it is sticky, line your mat (or towel) with plastic wrap. Have a bowl of cold water to dip your hands in. Have your fillings assembled nearby.

Dip your fingers in water, and use them to spread some rice evenly over the smooth side of the seaweed. It will probably take about a quarter of a cup of cooked rice to cover the seaweed. Sprinkle this with sesame seeds. Flip the seaweed over, so that the rice is now on the downward side. Begin to fill the roll. Start with some crab, add a little cucumber and avocado, and then roll it up. Use your fingers to press the fillings into the roll and get the roll as tight as you can.

Once it is rolled, use a very sharp knife to cut the slices. I generally get six pieces out of one roll. If you dip the knife blade in cold water, it will cut better.

I ended up using half of the avocado, half the cucumber, and made six rolls.


Use about this much filling. Experiment to see how much filling you can get in the roll without overstuffing it.

Kale and white beans

This meal felt like comfort food, which is strange, because I never ate cooked greens growing up, they were certainly not part of my life at least until the age of 20. Except to look at them and go ewwwwww. So why does boiled kale seem like comfort food to me? I have no idea. A while ago I was trying to figure out what to do with some leftover kale, I had made a kale, white bean, and sausage soup, which was delicious, but I had leftover kale. I could have made kale crunchies, but that seemed like too much work. Then I found this post, and she writes about her kale so poetically that I had to try it. I kind of did my own thing, since I had leftover beans, too, but this bowlful of glop was totally inspired by that recipe. If you aren't into fried eggs with runny yolks (and I know Ed doesn't like runny yolks, but thats how I love my eggs- crunchy on the bottom and goopy on top), you could cook your egg over easy or just leave it out, but, I really do think the yolk adds something to the overall dish. Ups the yum content...

So, this dish also goes really well with some sort of thick, whole-grain, toasted bread. I happened to have some of that leftover from the soup (because all soups go best with bread), but, like pretty much everything I make, its a flexible dish. You could leave out the bread. You could leave out the beans. You could leave out the egg. You could leave out the bacon. It all works, but, I like kale with all its accoutrements.

Boiled kale with stuff
Makes two servings, more or less. Maybe three if you don't eat much.

1/2C white beans (dry), or 1 can white beans (cooked)
1/2lb kale (those big bunches at the supermarket are about one pound)
3 pieces of bacon
1 onion
4 cloves of garlic
two thick slices of whole wheat bread, toasted
1 bay leaf
salt and pepper
2 eggs

The total cook time will be about half an hour, but its an easy half hour, you're just boiling things. If you forget to soak the beans, the cook time could be more like an hour and a half... so just stick the beans in a pot of cold water before you leave in the morning and they're ready to cook when you get home. Prep time is pretty short, too.

Soak the beans for 8 hours, or do a quick soak, where you bring the water to a boil and then let them sit for an hour. Or buy canned beans, but, its a lot cheaper (about eight times cheaper) to buy the dry ones. And then you can flavor them.

Bring your soaked beans to a boil, and then turn down the water to a simmer. Add a bay leaf. These will take 20-30 minutes to cook, I didn't time it, just keep checking them. Meanwhile, chop your bacon into little pieces, however big you want, you can leave the pieces all stuck together when you do this, they'll separate as they cook. Throw the bacon into a pot, and cook it until it is at a consistency at which you would eat it. In other words, no raw bacon. Instead of draining the grease into wherever you drain grease, drain it into the bean water. If you have lean bacon that doesn't drain, add about a tablespoon of olive oil to the bean water. I find the fat helps the skins get soft. At this point you can add salt to the beans, too, about a tablespoon or so.

Chop your onion and dice your garlic. Add the onion to the bacon in the pot, and cook until they're translucent. Add the garlic and cook until its toasty golden. Add 3-4 cups of water, and bring it to a boil. Take the leaves off the stems of the kale, chop them up, and add them to the water. Its probably a good idea to wash the kale first, but, I forgot, and it wasn't gritty. Add salt and pepper to taste. Cook the kale for 15 minutes or so in boiling water. This is plenty of time to clean up the mess you just made prepping dinner.

Toast some bread. Fry an egg, I actually used olive oil, and it got really nice and crispy, just how I like it! Once the beans are done, layer a piece of bread in a big wide bowl, then stack some beans around it (throw out the bay leaf). Put a big ol' pile o' kale (and bacon) on top of the bread. If you want soup, pour in some broth, otherwise, just the kale. Put the egg on top. Break the yolk, and mix everything around until you have a delicious, yolk-soaked, pile of glop. Dig in!