Tag Archives: spinach

Provençal Sandwich

13 Jun

This is a sandwich inspired by the ingredients left-over from the Cheesy Lasagna I made with Natalia the other day…

I discovered Provençal Mushrooms during my trip to Montevideo, Uruguay.   I visited for work to shoot a TV commercial there and let me tell you… Uruguay is not a place too welcoming of vegetarians.  Just like Argentina, Uruguayan cuisine is filled with “parrilladas” and meat, meat and meat everywhere… what’s a vegetarian girl to do??

These provençal mushrooms were  in the menu of El Palenque, one of the most famous restaurants in Viejo Montevideo, next to the Mercado del Puerto.  I had them with French fries and the combination of the garlic sauce, parsley, lemon juice was exquisite.  I like it so much I went again to the same restaurant to eat the same thing a few times… not out of necessity, but out of gluttony.

When I saw the left-over spinach and sliced mushrooms I decided to combine them into a neat little sandwich inspired by those awesome mushrooms in Uruguay… perfect for a Sunday lunch at the beach.

 

 provencal sand 3

 PROVENCAL SANDWICH

¼ cup of defrosted spinach, squeezed dry
2 button mushrooms, sliced
1 scallion
1 small garlic clove, made into a paste with some salt
¼ cubannelle pepper, cut into strips
2 tbs fresh parsley, chopped medium
The juice of 1 lemon
Salt and pepper to taste
2 oz of goat cheese
Handful of organic arugula leaves, washed and dried
Olive oil
1 whole-wheat demi baguette

 

  1.  In a small skillet over medium heat, pour about 1 tbs of olive oil and sauté the scallion and the peppers.  Add the garlic paste and stir to combine to avoid the garlic to burn.
  2. After a few minutes when the peppers have softened, add the mushrooms.  Move them around a few times to make sure they cook on both sides and absorb the seasoning.  Add a little drizzle of more oil if you find the pan is too dry.
  3. When the mushrooms have acquired some color, add the spinach and parsley to the pan.  Season with salt and pepper and add the lemon juice.  Cook for just a few minutes and turn off the stove.  Let the residual heat of the pan finish cooking the filling.
  4. Now, cut the demi baguette into two halves and scoop out some of the soft dough inside to make some room for the filling.  Drizzle with some olive oil and toast in a toaster oven to your desired crispiness.
  5. Spread both sides with goat cheese.  Transfer the filling to the bottom bread.  Drizzle with a bit extra olive oil.  Place the arugula leaves and then cover with the top bread.

 Provencal Sand 2

 

All you need now are the French fries…

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Cook with your Kids…

8 Jun

I have 2 “nieces” I have told you about… Mariana and Natalia.  “Nieces” is in quotations because they’re actually the daughters of my best friends – but to them I am their Titi Madelyn.

Fortunately and very grateful, they’re two very lucky girls whose parents can provide anything and everything to them.  So it became a challenge for me to choose a birthday gift for them every year.  Since last year, Titi Madelyn decided she would only provide experiences as gifts.  They do not need one more toy or one more t-shirt…  really.

Natalia turned 7 last month and as a birthday gift she got a cooking class by yours truly…  She had the choice of learning to make a cheesy lasagna, “pastelillitos de Shrek” or Italian Quesadillas.  She chose the cheesy lasagna, because I think in another life we were both mice…

I truly believe that when you get kids involved in preparing what they’ll eat, they’ll be more inclined to try new things and to eat whatever is on their plate.  I always tell Natalia and Mariana that if it wasn’t good tasting or good for them I would not even offer it.  They get it…

Natalia had to make several decisions to make her Cheesy Lasagna.  She had to choose between:

  1. Small or Large pyrex mold – she chose the larger one
  2. What ingredients to include in it – her choices were spinach, oven roasted tomatoes, fresh tomatoes, almonds and button mushrooms

She finally chose spinach, fresh tomatoes, mushrooms and skinned almonds.  She wanted it all…   She squeezed dry the spinach and I explained to her how all that green water would not be helpful for a cheesy lasagna.  She skinned almonds with me.  She arranged the almonds on a sheet to toast in the toaster oven.  She cleaned and sliced very carefully the button mushrooms and the organic heirloom tomatoes and placed it in separate dishes for the upcoming assembly.  She loved that the mushrooms looked like little trees.

                             Toasting almonds     slicing mushrooms 2

I explained to her we would make a cheese sauce to pour in between the layers we were going to assemble.  The cheese sauce was a mixture of every cheese I had in the fridge at the moment… I assure you I did not buy one cheese for this project.  We used cream cheese, ricotta, parmesan, shredded mozzarella, fresh mozzarella and goat cheese.  She tasted each cheese individually before adding them to the milk seasoned with sofrito, salt and pepper.  She already knew the cream cheese, parmesan and shredded mozzarella from making pita pizzas with me.   But she tasted ricotta and goat cheese for the first time. She LOVED the goat cheese… and ate 2 goat cheese toasts while we were making dinner.  Titi Madelyn tasted goat cheese for the first time about 7 yrs ago… figure that one out.

Natalia added each cheese to the cheese sauce pot and stirred it carefully to help the cheeses combine and melt together.  I was in charge of boiling the water for the Jerusalem artichoke pasta.  I just set some water to boil, turned the stove off and let the noodles soften in that water.  The cheese sauce would continue to cook the pasta perfectly when the lasagna is assembled and in the oven.

This is more a method of making lasagna more than a recipe per se… but if you would like to replicate what Natalia and I did, here’s the ingredient list:

Natalia Lasagna

NATALIA’S CHEESY SPINACH, ALMOND, MUSHROOM AND TOMATO LASAGNA

½ package of DeBoles Jerusalem artichoke lasagna noodles
½ cup defrosted cut leaf spinach
6-7 button mushrooms, cleaned and sliced
3 small organic tomatoes, washed and sliced
a handful of almonds, peeled and toasted
1 tbs olive oil
1 tsp of sofrito
About 1 ½ cups of milk – I really used what was left in the carton so I didn’t measure it
½ brick of cream cheese
¼ tub of ricotta cheese
1 cup shredded mozzarella – the one you use for pizzas…
½ log of goat cheese
About ¼ cup grated parmesan cheese – but you could also use pecorino romano, asiago, grana padano, etc.
Salt and Pepper to taste
3 slices of fresh mozzarella – to top the lasagna only
 

Natalia then assembled the lasagna.  She decided in which order she would add the filling components:

  1. We started with a layer of sauce, then noodles, then more sauce. 
  2. Now goes the filling layer – spinach, mushrooms, tomatoes and almonds. 
  3. Add a sprinkling of more parmesan cheese before adding the next layer of sauce, pasta and more sauce. 
  4. Repeat until you create 3 layers of filling. 
  5. Then finish off of with the fourth and last layer of pasta covered with the remaining sauce you have and topped with pieces of fresh mozzarella. 
  6. I helped out with the hot noodles and the hot sauce, but Natalia did all the rest. 
  7. I baked the lasagna at 400F for about 25 minutes in my toaster oven.   We basically waited until the top got a nice brown color.  

    8. Filling

Natalia was super hungry by the time the lasagna was in the oven and I was in a hurry to feed her…We served her a nice piece with a side salad dressed with my Left-Over Dressing.  She ate so much; I had to give her a few papaya enzyme chewables to help her with her digestion and overfull tummy.  Her mom loved it too and took a great big piece home with her so daddy would also get a chance to try it.

Natalia Lasagna in PLate

The moral of the story…   Cook with your kids OFTEN.  Allow them to make decisions into what they’ll have for dinner, as long as they’re within what you believe is good for them.  Let them feel they’re part of the process and they will in turn reward you with the satisfaction of enjoying what they eat, enjoying foods good for them, raving all about it and asking you for more.  Natalia already wants us to schedule another “cooking class” when her Summer Camp ends.

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Spinach Pinwheels

2 Jun

Originally this was going to be one of the dishes I was going to prepare for my goddaughter and our little experiment.  However, I forgot completely to defrost the puffed pastry and, by the time I remembered, it was too late… and I did not want the kids to arrive and see evidence of spinach before they had to actually taste them.

So, I made them a week later in a get-together I hosted for my bunch from college.  It had been almost a year since our last get-together and we needed to get up to speed with all our lives.  So my friend Aniette and I decided, democratically we needed to get-together NOW!

I liked these because they were easy to make, you can prepare them ahead of time before your guests arrive and bake while people are talking so you have something hot to pass out.   Kind of felt like a short order cook because I would make them, put a plate on a table and by the time I turned around the plate was empty.  So I went back and did some more… and I went back and did some more… and some more… maybe the plate was too little??

 

 Spinach Pinwheels

 

SPINACH PINWHEELS

2 sheets of puffed pastry, defrosted in the refrigerator overnight – I just buy it and place it in the fridge…
1 heaping cup of frozen spinach, it will become about ½ cup defrosted and squeeze it dry
1 tbs butter, melted
About 1/3 cup parmesan cheese, grated
About ½ cup gruyere cheese, grated
A little whole-wheat flour so the pastry doesn’t stick when we roll it

 

  1. Open the puffed pastry (which comes folded in three).  Place some flour onto a clean surface and flour the rolling pin too.  Roll out the pastry so that it loses the creases where the folds were.
  2. Cut the pastry in half.  Set one half aside and work with the first one.
  3. Spread some melted butter on top of the pastry, sprinkle some parmesan cheese, spread an even layer of spinach leaving a border on one edge and sprinkle the grated gruyere on top of the spinach.
  4. Start rolling from the farthest edge from the border you left without spinach.  Roll the pastry onto itself until you create a log. 
  5. Repeat steps 3 and 4 with the second half of pastry.  Place both logs in the fridge covered with a moist paper towel for about 10-15 minutes or until you’re ready to bake them.  This is important for the pastry to harden a bit again.  It’ll be easier to cut if the pastry is cold than if it is at room temp.
  6. Slice the logs into ½ inch pieces. Place onto a baking sheet lined with parchment paper and bake in a 425F oven for about 10-12 minutes, until the cheeses smell great and the pastry is puffed and golden delicious.

Transfer them to a cool plate and serve them immediately.

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Spinach Puffed Empanada

9 May

I visit the Serious Eats website almost daily… I love it as a source of news and inspiration in regards to food. 

They just recently launched this series of Weekend Cook and Tell where they scour the various food sections of national newspapers to find an article or recipe to inspire a weekend cooking project.  This weekend’s project is to make a great weekend meal by cleaning out your pantry.  They were inspired by an article in the Chicago Sun-Times  about making meals out of whatever you have on hand.

I am pretty anal-retentive about having a tidy fridge and lately I have not been able to keep it as organized and tidy as I would like.  So I am on a rampage of using up everything in my fridge and to liberate it as much as possible.  So you would think why I was so drawn to this project…  I actually went to the market today and I did not use up anything that entered the house today… all of the ingredients have been in the house for at least a week.

I actually used a bunch of stuff I had mostly in my fridge and freezer… and not new things I had; I used up stuff I had bit and pieces, like:

  • ¼ bag of frozen cut-leaf spinach – I don’t know how long this was in there because I was using another bag and moving thing around this morning I found this other bag…
  • 1 2-inch piece of leftover gruyere cheese – left over from making Popeye Pita Pizzas and the Cauliflower and Cheese Mac
  • 1 sheet of puff pastry – left over from a get-together I had last Saturday where I made Spinach Pinwheels that got too soft and fused together and re-froze because I did not know what to do with it at the time…
  • ½ onion – left over from making a batch of my Veggie Dip
  • 1 scallion – left from making a Green Goddess dressing for a friend
  • toasted pepitas – leftover from my Mexican Lasagna recipe
  • breadcrumbs I made a few months ago from bread that got too hard for a sandwich

 The results were spectacular…  I was inspired by a recipe from Ina Garten in her Barefoot in Paris book.  When I read the recipe I realized I had all the most important ingredients in my pantry to recreate it. 

 

 Spinach Empanada 4

SPINACH PUFFED EMPANADA

1 sheet of puff pastry, defrosted for only 30 minutes or overnight in the fridge
About 1 ½ cups of frozen cut-leaf spinach, thawed and as much water squeezed our as possible
About ½ cup gruyere cheese, grated
About ¼ cup Parmesan cheese
½ medium onion, chopped
2 garlic cloves
2 tbs olive oil
1 scallion, sliced thin
About ¼ cup pepitas (pumpkin seeds), toasted
About 2 tbs whole-wheat breadcrumbs
Salt and pepper to taste
1 tbs butter, melted
Whole-wheat flour – to work with the puff pastry

 

My apologies in regards to the amount of ingredients in this recipe… because my intention was to CLEAN THE FRIDGE, I really didn’t measure them when I was putting it together.  I just took what was left of the spinach, what was left of the gruyere, a few finger-fulls of breadcrumbs… and “played it by ear”/improvised.  I include a few photos so you can see how the mixture looked when put together…

 

  1. Pre-heat oven to 375 F.
  2. In a small skillet over medium heat, add olive oil, onions and garlic.  Sauté for a few minutes until the onions start to soften and become a bit translucent.
  3. In a medium sized bowl, mix together the spinach, scallions, onion mixture, gruyere and parmesan cheeses, breadcrumbs, pepitas.  Season with salt and pepper to taste.

Spinach Filling

The puffed pastry usually comes folded in thirds, but I defrosted it at room temperature for over 40 minutes and it basically fused together and I was not able to open it up as you usually can.  So what I did was to dust it with a little bit of whole-wheat flour, cut it into two pieces and roll it out.  What’s puff pastry than layers and layers of pastry rolled together… so ours will have 3 extra layers than what the manufacturers intended… 

  1. I rolled the two halves of puff pastry one a bit larger than the other… you’ll see why later on.  I rolled it enough to fit the baking tray of my toaster oven.  I cover the baking sheet using a layer of aluminum foil and then parchment to ease up on the cleaning.
  2. Place the larger pastry half onto the baking sheet lined with parchment. 
  3. Transfer the spinach mixture carefully onto the puff pastry leaving about a ½ inch border all the way around.  Try to flatten the mixture a bit to make it an even layer. 
  4. SPinach Empanada 1
  5. Place the smaller layer on top of the spinach.  Bring the edges of the puff pastry together folding one onto the other and securing by pinching with the tines of a fork.
  6. Spinach Empanada 2
  7. Brush the top layer of pastry with the melted butter.  Make 3 slits on the top for the steam to escape.
  8. Bake in the oven for about 30 minutes, until the pastry is golden brown and smells delicious.
  9. Take it out of the oven carefully and out of the baking sheet to cool off a bit into a cutting board.

Spinach Empanada 6 

Spinach Hole

I was so thrilled to make a large spinach “pastelillo”… served with a nice Salade des Haricots Verts, this made for a great light dinner. 

Spinach Empanada 5

And thanks to it… my freezer and fridge have a few less clutter than before.  This challenge came in with great timing…  I created a delicious meal I have never done before with ingredients I already had in my fridge.

I am sure I can come-up with a few extra of these; I’ll definitely keep you posted…

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Smoked Gouda and Spinach Risotto

22 Jan

I love this dish… to me, this dish is comfort food at its finest and easiest.

You know me, I make risotto from a box, but I never eat it straight as is… I always embellish the risotto from Archer Farms with lots of flavor and ingredients.  I actually started making this risotto a looooooooooong time ago, more or less 10 years.  But I used to make it with a Lipton’s Creamy Garlic and Parmesan Risotto mix.  Unfortunately, that product was discontinued… but now I can continue the legacy buying rice at Target every time I travel.

I first learned the basics of flavors for this recipe from something I had read in Cooking Light magazine…  I saw the recipe but I said to myself I would never stand in front of a stove stirring rice for 20-25 minutes.  I love how this tastes… and no one who has had it has ever asked or noticed that the base is from a box, because the flavors are so restaurant like.

I do have to warn you, this recipe is addictive… and with the amount of cheese, it is a bit fattening.  But for special occasions, to celebrate others or yourself, this recipe is easy, reliable and most importantly, delicious.

 smoked-gouda-risotto-2

SMOKED GOUDA AND SPINACH RISOTTO

1 box of Archer Farms 4-Cheese Risotto mix
1 ¼ cup cut-leaf spinach, defrosted and squeezed, but not too much
8-10 button mushrooms, cleaned well and sliced
½ a round of smoked Gouda cheese
3 oz of cream cheese
1/2 cup Fontina cheese, grated
½ cup Pecorino Romano cheese, grated
¼ cup sun dried tomatoes, sliced (optional, but highly recommended)

 

  1. In a large pot, bring 2 ½ cup of water to a boil… we’re basically preparing the risotto according to packaging directions… when the water boils, dump in the rice packet and the seasonings packet.  It might seem the pot is too large, but the mixture will bulk up with the cheeses and mushrooms, specially.
  2. While that cooks a bit, you have some time to slice mushrooms, slice the sun-dried tomatoes and grate the cheeses.  Even though the spinach I buy is cut-leaf spinach, I usually run my kitchen scissors through it to make sure the pieces of spinach are manageable when eating.
  3. When the rice is partly done, add the spinach to the pot.  Mix well and cover partially so the rice comes again to temperature quickly.  After the rice has come to temperature, add the cheeses one by one… I usually start with the cream cheese, then the Gouda, then the Fontina and then the Pecorino.  Mix well to help the cheeses melt into the rice/spinach mixture.
  4. When the cheeses have melted well, but the sauce is still runny, add the mushroom slices and the sun-dried tomatoes, if using.  Mix everything well and let the mushrooms cook a bit.  
  5. When you feel the rice is done, cover the pot and let it stand there for about 10-15 minutes. 

 

While you’re waiting, you can make a side salad or some baked plantains…  the sauce will thicken a bit after waiting a little while and it will be at a nicer temperature where you can really enjoy the cheese and spinach flavors.  If it’s too hot, you won’t taste anything…

This recipe reheats very well.  All I do for the sauce to return to its creamy consistency is to heat it any leftovers up with a bit of cream, half and half or even milk.  I reheat it on the stove top and in a few minutes it’s creamy as it was the night before.

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