spinach cheddar mini muffins

My little baby is eating!!! Err, attempting to eat. Honestly he is mostly just playing with his food at this point. There is a serious learning curve for getting different shaped and structured foods to your mouth, feeling said things with your mouth, perhaps chewing/gnawing/tasting them, and maybe even swallowing a bit. We are doing the whole baby led weaning thing. For all of you non-baby people, it is a trend towards letting your baby feed themselves what you're eating (minus too much salt or sugar) rather than spoon feeding them purees. Here is a slightly more eggy and less spicy version of a recipe from the Baby Led Weaning Cookbook:

Ingredients:
olive oil
1/2 red onion, chopped
1 c. + 3 T. all purpose flour
1 1/2 t. baking powder
1/2 t. cayenne pepper
2 eggs
1/2 c. milk
2/3 c. cheddar cheese, grated
2 c. spinach, torn

Saute the onion in butter.  Mix the dry ingredients. Beat the eggs and milk and stir into dry ingredients.  Fold in the cooked onion, cheese, and spinach. Distribute into mini muffin tin and bake at 325° for 20 minutes.

freezing spinach

I froze some of the spinach from our garden so we can enjoy it in the winter.  After picking and rinsing it, I chopped the spinach roughly, steamed for 2 minutes, quickly transferred the hot spinach to an ice water bath, removed the cooled spinach from the water bath, removed as much moisture as I could (with a salad spinner if you have one; we don't yet so I spun the wet spinach in a tea towel round and round over my head), spread the spinach out in a freezer bag, and put it in the freezer.

balls! spinach balls!

We had a ball themed supper recently with friends. Everyone made and ate ball shaped food. It was a ball. (hah) One of our friends made spinach balls that were so good we had to recreate them for dinner. The basic idea is to mix together cooked spinach & onions, bread crumbs, feta cheese, eggs, and spices. Then you roll the mixture into balls and bake. The end.

open-faced spinach melts

When I went to the farmer's market on Wednesday, it was raining and turn out was low. The devotion of the people who showed up to sell in the rain made me more compelled than usual to buy produced goods like these locally made chips and salsa which we enjoyed last night for dinner with friends.

Guess what else we had for dinner! Let me give you a clue. For our first dinner with friends we had spinach soup, for the second we had wildrice and spinach casserole, and now for the third we had... that's right, something with spinach. It actually turned out to be really delicious open-faced spinach melts (homemade kalamata olive bread, garlicy local spinach, local mushrooms, carmelized onions, and gouda cheese).




And for dessert, we ate vegan vanilla-lemon-orange poundcake. We used the recipe in Veganomicon. I couldn't get my hands on any rhubarb to make a sauce for the poundcake. Maybe this weekend I will be able to...

spreading the love

I am on a new mission to invite people over for dinner. I'm hoping to make it a regular habit, like once a week. So watch out, you may be next!

For the inaugural event, Eric and I made a creamy vegan spinach soup (spinach, sunchokes, scallions, carrots, roux, soy milk, spices) and a millet polenta with home canned tomato sauce. Our friends brought peach crisp made from frozen peaches harvested from a family tree.

Yay local, seasonal, organic, vegetarian food! Yay community!

spinach ravioli

Yet another way to eat spinach - sneak it into your pasta dough! Earlier this week, I made a batch of 40 spinach raviolis stuffed with spinach, mushroom, onion, and tofu. Right after forming the raviolis, I put them in the freezer. The frozen raviolis make a great tasting instant dinner option - just boil them for 3 minutes and top with pasta sauce.

Spinach Pasta Dough Ingredients:
4 oz. spinach, chopped, steamed
2 c. semolina flour
3/4 c. water
1/4 c. olive oil
1 t. salt

Blend the pasta dough ingredients in a food processor for a minute. The dough should clump up into a ball. Take out the dough and knead in additional flour or water as necessary. Divide the dough into 4 balls. On a flour dusted counter, roll a ball out into a sheet. Rotate and flip once in awhile to make sure it doesn't stick. Mark a grid. Layout whatever filling you choose within the grid. Lay another sheet over the top. Press to seal along the grid. Work your way from the middle-out pressing out air pockets on you way. Slice to form individual raviolis. Throw them onto a flour dusted cookie sheet and put them in your freezer until frozen. Once frozen, you can transfer the raviolis into a bag or some other storage container.

garlic scape pesto

Garlic scapes came in our Abbondanza farm share for the past two weeks. They are good in a stir fry, but I think pesto is my favorite way to eat them. I threw some spinach into this pesto, but that's totally optional. The spinach calms the bite of the garlic a little bit though not too much. If you're lucky enough to have basil, you can of course use that too. As I've mentioned before, I find that pesto is usually creamy enough without pine nuts or walnuts or parmesan but you're the boss. Now DO IT!

Ingredients:
2 handfuls of garlic scapes, chopped into 1-2 inch segments (around half a pound)
2 handfuls of spinach (optional)
1/2 c. olive oil
1/2 t. salt

Blend everything! Yum!

palak paneer

With the amount of spinach at the farmer's market right now, we are finding that we need to change up how we eat it - not just in salads, not just on sandwiches, not just steamed. An Indian spinach stew called palak paneer happens to be one of Julie's favorite dishes. Palak paneer is deliciously creamy and smooth. If you are thinking of trying Indian food for the first time, this is a good dish to start with.

Palak refers to the spinach and paneer refers to little cubes of soft cheese. Palak is often made with heavy cream, whole milk and ghee. Apparently, cashews can be used instead of milk products to add creaminess but they traditionally are used only for special occasions because cashews are expensive. Well, since we can afford cashews for more than just special occassions and since we wanted our palak to potentially feed our vegan friends, we made ours with cashews. Being the make-it-from-scratchers that we are, we made the paneer from scratch. If you are making this dish vegan you could easily replace the paneer with tofu.

Serving Size: 6

Paneer Ingredients:
1/2 gal. whole milk
3 T. lemon juice
2 layers of cheesecloth, approximately 12"x12" squares

Palak Ingredients:
1 lb raw spinach
1/3 c. (~50g) cashews
1/2 onion, minced
3 oz. tomato paste or 1 tomato
2 T. earth balance margerine
1 T. frozen cilantro
1 t. frozen ginger
1 t. turmeric, ground
2 cloves garlic, minced
1/2 t. ground cayenne
1/2 t. cumin, ground
1/2 t. corriander ground
salt to taste

For the paneer, I followed instructions from Indira's blog titled "Mahanandi". I also found helpful comments at the blog "food and other musings".

Basically, boil milk in a tall pot. Try to keep it at a rolling boil for at least 5 minutes. Stirring a lot and having a tall pot helps to keep the foam from spilling over. Then, remove from heat, add lemon juice, and stir for 3 minutes. Curds will form. Let it sit for 10 minutes to get more curds.

If you don't get many curds, you can just boil it again and try adding lemon juice a second time. Reading the comments on the blogs mentioned above really helped--I'll summarize what I think are the most important points below:

• Both pasteurized and raw milk will work.
• Ultra-pasteurized or ultra high temperature (UHT) milk will not work.
• Cow, goat, sheep, horse milk...it's all good.
• Whole milk works best. 2%, 1%, and skim may work, but will yield less cheese.
• Use the tallest pot you got.
• Boil the milk for at least 5 minutes, stirring to prevent the foam from spilling over.
• You can use any acid to promote curdling: lemon juice, lime juice, vinegar, yogurt.
• When the curds form, a translucent, yellowy liquid (whey) will remain.
• When the curds do form, it is like magic.

Strain the curds through the cheesecloth, saving the whey (you can put it in shakes or make ricotta). Flatten the curds on a plate to 1/2" thickness. Press between two plates for at least 20 minutes to squeeze out more whey. Refrigerate overnight.

For the palak, I used Indira's palak recipe as a starting point.

In medium pot over low heat, melt 1 T. margerine and add the cayenne pepper and spinach. A pound of spinach may sound like a lot, but it cooks down dramatically. Feel free to use fresh green chilis instead of cayenne pepper. When the spinach is wilted, let it cool (you can add ice cubes if you're in a rush) and blend it in the food processor. Mix in half of a 6 oz. can of tomato paste. If tomatoes are in season, boil and mash a fresh tomato instead of using tomato paste. Set aside.

Dry-roast the cashews. Then blend the cashews to a fine powder in a food processor. Set aside. Use the already dirtied food processor once again to mince the onions.

Saute the onions in 1 T. of margarine until translucent. Add in the ginger, cilantro, garlic, turmeric, cumin, and coriander. Cook for a few minutes. Add in the wilted spinach, tomato and cashew powder. Mix well and salt to taste. Remove the paneer from the fridge and cut it into cubes. You can fry it first or add it to the palak as is. Serve with rice, rotis, or naan.


Side Notes:
Saag is pretty much the same thing as palak except that palak is exclusively spinach while saag can have mustard greens. I bet garlic mustard would make a great saag!

If you have raw milk, you can skip the boiling step and simply form curds and whey by letting it "spoil". Do not do this with pasteurized milk because it skips the curds and whey step and goes straight to bad. Bad meaning bad, not bad meaning good.

Indira's blog is one of my new favorites--the photos are great! Go here for the most recent posts!

tofu scramble

There is a lot you can add to tofu scramble to make it delicious no matter what season it is. Since it is winter, we added frozen corn, frozen edamame, and frozen spinach (all from the farmers market). This time we experimented with adding reconstituted dried bell peppers (red and green)--which adds more color to the scramble. You could also add reconstituted sun-dried tomatoes or mushrooms. Turmeric, nutritional yeast, and soy sauce finish off the seasonings of this hearty breakfast. I don't know if people started putting turmeric in tofu scramble just for the color, but now I can't imagine tofu scramble without the distinctive turmeric flavor. And I like nutritional yeast so I try to find a way to put in everything.

Serving Size: 4

Ingredients:

1/2 large onion, diced

1 lb extra-firm tofu, drained and crumbled

2 large cloves garlic, minced

2 t. turmeric

1 c. frozen corn
3/4 c. frozen spinach, minced

1/2 c. frozen, boiled, shelled edamame

1/4 c. dried bell peppers bits, reconstituted in 1/4 c. red wine
1 t. basil
1 t. thyme
1/2 c. nutritional yeast

1/8 c. soy sauce

salt and black pepper to taste

In a frying pan, saute the onions with 1 T. oil and a pinch of salt until translucent. In the mean time, crumble the tofu into small pieces. I like to squeeze the tofu brick between my fingers over a colander. I then push the tofu down in the colander with my fists, squeezing out as much water as I can.

Add the crumbled tofu, turmeric and half of the minced garlic to the frying pan. Mix once then allow the tofu to brown on one side. Once browned, continue to saute stirring more often. Add frozen corn, frozen spinach, frozen edamame, reconstituted peppers, basil and thyme. When the frozen ingredients have thawed add soy sauce, nutritional yeast and the remaining minced garlic. Add salt and black pepper to taste.

Serve with hot sauce if you like and buttered toast.