Spinach Enchiladas

I finally figured out a good spinach enchilada recipe. For the filling I used 2 cups cooked fresh spinach, chopped and combined with shredded Monterey jack and cotija cheeses. I briefly fried corn tortillas, filled them, topped them with sauce and more shredded cheese. Then I baked them for about 10 minutes.

I made this sauce from Aida Gabilondo's Mexican Family Cooking.

Tomatillo Cilantro Sauce

1 pound fresh tomatillos, husked

1 cup cold water

4 garlic cloves

1 jalapeno, seeds and all

1/2 medium white onion

2 cups cilantro leaves

2 tablespoons vegetable oil

1 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon sugar

First put the tomatillos in a saucepan with water to cover, bring to a boil, and simmer 20 minutes. Drain.

Put tomatillos in a blender with water, garlic, jalapeno, onion, and cilantro. Blend until nearly liquid.

Heat oil in a pan and pour the sauce directly into it. Season with salt and sugar and simmer for five minutes.

Cinco de Mayo

We gave a nod to Cinco de Mayo yesterday. I made spinach enchiladas, beans, and salad. Of course I cook Mexican food two or three times a week, so the coincidence was not that startling.

I have eaten spinach enchiladas at a couple of restaurants, but never made them at home. Dad picked the rest of the spinach crop for this spring, so the time seemed right. The recipes I found on the web just didn't seem very authentic--in fact, I was suckered in to using nutmeg in my filling, and I should know better! Anyway, I made a filling of browned onions, spinach, and crumbled cotija cheese.

I tried a new method of preparing corn tortillas for enchiladas: brushing them with olive oil and microwaving them--okay, but traditional pan-frying feels more satisfying. Then I made a light cream sauce with a chicken broth base and some chopped canned jalapenos added. I rolled up the enchiladas with the spinach filling, poured the cream sauce over, and topped with some grated mixed cheese. I baked them in the outside oven for 10 or 15 minutes.

Salad consisted of fresh garden greens with lots of avocado slices.

Spinach Frittata

Susan made this delicious spinach frittata for us for breakfast. She started it in a huge skillet and finished it in the oven. It was seasoned with tarragon, very unusual but just perfect. We got to take the last piece with us on the road for a mid-morning snack.

Spinach Quesadillas

There is no easier, more comforting meal for me than a quesadilla.

Ever since I learned to make microwaved tortilla-and-cheeses as a kid (open-faced -- just grated cheddar on a white flour tortilla: I would nuke it until the oil separated from the cheese and I could pour and blot it off, then microwave it some more until the degreased cheese became hard and crunchy) this has been a standard meal.

Anyway, this dinner took 5 minutes to make.

The night before, I started a batch of beans in the crockpot, adding the seasonings the next morning before work. They were steamy and soft and delicious by dinnertime.

The quesadillas consisted of:

• whole wheat tortillas
• chopped fresh garden tomatoes, drained in colander
• fresh spinach, lots of it, since it cooks down so much
• slices of queso fresco. I don't grate the cheese, because I hate washing the cheese grater, so I just cut slices and they melt just fine.
• a sprinkling of grated Parmesan. I love cotija, too, but when I don't have it, feta or Parmesan works well.

I usually just heat up a pan on medium, put the tiniest bit of olive oil or butter in the pan, and toast the quesadilla on both sides. I'll put a lid on during the early part to help the cheese melt, but too much of that will make the tortillas too soft.

We ate the quesadillas and the beans with some fresh chiltepin and ordono chiles from the garden. Salsas are nice, but they take time, and this was supposed to be a fast dinner.

Other things I have put in quesadillas:

• scrambled eggs
• leftover pork, chicken, or beef
• chorizo
  
• leftover grilled fish
  
• sauteed shrimp
• black or pinto beans from a can or homemade
  
• any kine cheese
• leftover cooked collard greens
• arugula
• mixed lettuces
  
• avocado
  
• roasted green chiles or red bell peppers
• fresh chopped bell peppers
• a chopped chipotle, preferably mixed with beans or something to distribute the heat
  
• caramelized onions
  
• chives
• cilantro
• watercress
• lime zest
  
• Herdez salsa verde

What have I missed? Anything else I should try?

Halibut and Spinach

I am trying to include a photo of where we were eating these dishes. This day we hiked to a spectacular waterfall in British Columbia, then ate a meal of fresh halibut accompanied by spinach and rice. I love having both English and French on Canadian products.

Food was SO expensive in Canada and Alaska, especially fresh fruits and vegetables. In Anchorage I paid $2 apiece for Gala apples. Russell gets a CSA box and it is so important there. You talked about sharing a CSA box with a friend--are you doing that?

Pot Luck Vegetables

Eva, here are a couple of vegetable recipes that can be served at room temperature. I would be ecstatic to find dishes like these at a pot luck lunch. (Disclosure: this is Swiss chard in the picture, not spinach).

Carrots with Lemon Mustard Dressing

1 pound carrots, peeled and julienned

Cook the carrots in boiling salted water until just tender. Drain and rinse with cold water.

2 lemons, juiced

2 tablespoons brown sugar

2 tablespoons coarse mustard

1 teaspoon Dijon mustard

2 tablespoons olive oil

Salt and pepper

Mix lemon juice, sugar, and mustards; whisk in olive oil and season with salt and pepper. Toss with carrots.

Fancy Spinach and Artichokes

1 jar marinated artichoke hearts (drain and reserve liquid)

2 large bunches spinach, cleaned, lightly cooked, and well drained (or 2 packages frozen, ditto)

Spray a Pyrex pie plate or shallow casserole with cooking spray. Arrange artichoke hearts in bottom and spread spinach on top.

2 eggs

4 ounces cream cheese
4 ounces sour cream
Reserved artichoke liquid, or milk
1 teaspoon dill weed
Salt and pepper to taste

Mix egg, cream cheese, sour cream, milk, dill weed, salt, and pepper. Add a little milk if necessary to make mixture spreadable. Spread over spinach in casserole.

Parmesan cheese to cover

Top with Parmesan. Cover and bake at 350º for 30 minutes, then uncover and bake for 10 more minutes.

Spinach Rice Thing

Our subject tonight is in the back of this picture, behind the beets and the chicken.

It's hard for me to name this dish because I can't decide whether the rice or the spinach is the base ingredient. It's originally from Mireille Johnston's Cuisine of the Sun, with some modifications...she calls it Fada Riquet. But around here, Spinach Rice Thing it is.

Fill a large saucepan or small Dutch oven 1/2 full with water and bring to a boil.

Add 1/2 cup dry rice and simmer uncovered for 15 minutes.

Add 1/2 pound of fresh spinach -- or 1 large (9 oz) bag -- and boil for 10 more minutes. Drain everything thoroughly.

Return to pan and heat over medium-low until hot (pretty much just to make the eggs safe):

-2 eggs
-1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg (or more if, unlike me, you did not somehow acquire a container of nuclear nutmeg. The stuff is intense.)
-4 tablespoons Parmesan cheese
-salt
-pepper
-1 tablespoon olive oil (stir in at end)

This is so warm and comforting and awesome. And it's great left over.

I contributed a large batch to a recent potluck at work. For a crowd, I quadrupled the recipe, but for spinach I used 1 big bag of fresh spinach and 3 10-oz packages of frozen spinach. I only used 6 eggs. It was tasty.

Zucchini Gratin II: An Actual Recipe

My camera's broken, which is just as well, because I just went digging through our archives for a zucchini recipe for tonight's dinner and found what has to be my most obnoxious post. There's no actual recipe there, just some blabber and a pretty picture. So for tonight's post I re-reconstructed the zucchini gratin recipe. Here it is:

Combine:
-2 pounds zucchini, cut into 1/2-inch chunks, and lightly steamed if tough
- 2 eggs, beaten
- 1 small can green chiles, diced
- 1 teaspoon dill seed
- 2 cups cheese. Use any combination of shredded or diced mozzarella, jack, or cheddar; cottage cheese; Parmesan; whatever.
- salt and pepper to taste

If you used drier cheeses, you might also want to add up to 1/4 cup of milk or cream.
Put everything in a buttered casserole dish. Mix together and sprinkle on top:
- 1/2 cup bread crumbs or 2 slices bread, diced
- 1 or 2 tablespoons melted butter or olive oil
- Parmesan, if you have any

Bake uncovered at 375 for about 20 minutes, or until browned and bubbly.

I served it with garden spinach drizzled with a warm caramelized onion and tarragon dressing, an ad hoc and surprisingly good side dish. For dessert we had banana bread.

Lawnmowing Lentil Lunch

For lunch yesterday we came in from planting and digging and lawnmowing and were accidentally vegan. We had a spinach salad with almonds, orange bell peppers, and some bitter greens from the garden, and we had lentils. This was a made-up lentil dish, and it was so good:

Saute half an onion, then two cloves of garlic, in 1 tablespoon olive oil. Add 1 teaspoon each of cumin seeds, salt, and chile powder (pure, not prepared). Add 1 cup dry lentils and mix them in for a minute or two, then add a whole bunch of water. I think I used twice as much as the basic recipe on the bag. Simmer with a wooden spoon stuck under the lid until the liquid is absorbed and eveything is creamy, maybe 2 hours, maybe more.

It's good to remember that hard work does not always require country ham, biscuits, and a four-egg omelet.

Kuku

These are paperwhites that I forced from bulbs Nancy gave us for Christmas.
I made a Persian kuku today. It’s like a frittata or omelette, except that it’s baked and surprisingly light and fluffy.

The version I made, from The New Book of Middle Eastern Food by Claudia Roden, is the traditional dish served on Iranian New Year’s Day. It had shredded spinach, green onions, two handfuls of fresh herbs (I used dill, parsley, and cilantro), and a few walnuts and raisins, all lightly mixed with six eggs and baked for 45 minutes. I will definitely be making this again, especially for a picnic or cold lunch.

We had the kuku for dinner tonight along with baba ganoush, Ak-Mak, olives, feta chunks, Greek yogurt, and cherry tomatoes—a light Sunday night supper.

I have a recipe for cauliflower kuku that I’m planning to try next.

Cinnamon Beef Noodles

I've been working on a term paper, so I haven't been cooking for the last five days or so (or doing much of anything besides writing and thinking). But Lawson made his wonderful cinnamon-beef noodles. They are the perfect winter food -- lots of broth, slurpy noodles, thin slices of beef, spinach, and lots of spices. I keep meaning to give you his recipe...it's mostly from a Nina Simonds noodle book, but he makes it in the crock pot:

Saute very briefly (15-30 seconds):

6 green onions, coarsely chopped and smashed
6 cloves garlic, peeled and smashed
4 big slices fresh ginger
1 1/2 teaspoons sambal
2 cinnamon sticks
a few star anise

Throw the sauteed spices in the crock pot along with:

8-9 cups water
1/2 cup shoyu
2 pounds beef (use fairly lean beef -- it should be a light broth, not greasy)

Cook for 5 to 12 hours in the crockpot or 1.5 hours on the stove. Just before serving, throw the spinach in for ten minutes, and make a batch of noodles -- any kind of Asian or egg noodles will do. Put noodles, meat, spinach, and broth in each bowl. It's best to only add as much spinach and make as many moodles as you plan to eat for that meal, as over time the spinach tends to get slimy and the noodles soak up all the broth.

Yum.

Beef stew and pie stewing

On Sunday I made my first pot roast. I browned the meat, then sauteed some small whole onions and chopped carrots, then deglazed the pan with a can of High Life and transferred everything to the crockpot. There I added some stock, fresh thyme, a bay leaf, salt and pepper, and sliced mushrooms. I let it cook on high (which in a crockpot is not very high) for about four hours. We had it with egg noodles. I ate it for lunch the next day, too.

Tonight, at long last, I will eat spinach. I almost squealed when I saw it back in the grocery store this week. I plan to saute massive amounts of it with a tiny bit of garlic and a small dried red chile, then sprinkle it with balsamic vinegar. I have lots of mushrooms, too (they were 2-for-1), so I think I'm going to make some kind of mushroom-y light cream sauce and put it on wheat toast.

Right now I'm worrying about Friday, when my office has its annual Thanksgiving party to which everyone must bring food. I signed up to bring pies. However, I have band practice the night before. Am I going to stay up until 4 in the morning making pies after practice? I don't even know what kind to make...surely someone will bring sweet potato and pecan; I adore lemon meringue but don't know how it will survive a day at the office; my Mom's French chocolate tart might not be Thanksgiving-y enough. I suppose this could all be easily remedied by a trip to the grocery store bakery, but yuck!