little things

Little things make you happy. Like a new book from a favorite author, or even better, two new books from favorite authors. And while I'm there, my apologies to the woman at the Starbucks the weekend before last who must have thought I was extremely rude as I unabashedly listened in on her conversation with a friend about this book, because I didn't know there was a new Susanna Kearsley out. I bought my copy the next day. And while I was in the bookstore, I found this book, by another favorite, Jennifer Weiner. So I had a lovely week of reading.

And one night we had a very green dinner. I've talked about spinach gunge, and I had a huge bag of pea greens in my vegetable drawer waiting to be made into supper so I made a gunge out of them, without the cheese and smeared it on portobello mushrooms that had been brushed with olive oil and roasted for 15 minutes.

 

I sprinkled parmesan cheese on top of the gunge mushrooms

 and baked for about 10 more minutes until everything was hot and the cheese was melted. Served alongside a big salad of market spicy greens and arugula, it made for a very healthy and tasty supper.

Pea Greens Gunge (adapted from Bon Appetit, Fergus Henderson)

1 knob of butter
salt
1 1lb bag of pea greens
1 tsp mustard
1/4 c cream

Heat the butter in a saucepan over medium high heat. Once melted, add the greens and heat until wilted. Add the mustard and cream and puree until smooth in a food processor. Add salt to taste.

two ways to be green

Or rather to eat greens. Spinach greens that is. The first way to eat more spinach came from Heidi at 101Cookbooks, a lovely quick sauté of chopped spinach with spices and toasted coconut that I served with oven fries and poached eggs for a quick Saturday supper. (Never mind that we had Rhubarb Crumb Cake for dessert).

Spiced Spinach with Coconut (adapted from Heidi at 101Cookbooks)

170 g washed spinach, roughly chopped
1 shallot, chopped
1 clove garlic, minced
¼ tsp kosher salt
1 tbsp vegetable oil
¼ tsp mustard seeds (I used black as it was what I had)
¼ tsp whole cumin seeds
Pinch of ground red chilis
Squeeze of lemon juice
1 ½ tbsp unsweetened coconut, lightly toasted

Mix the shallot, garlic and salt together and mash into a paste. Heat the oil in a large skillet over medium heat. Add the seeds and let them toast. Add the chili powder, stir in the shallot/garlic paste and all the spinach. Keep stirring until the spinach softens a bit, about a minute. Add a squeeze of lemon juice and the coconut and serve.

The second way appealed to me because of it’s name, Spinach Gunge, from this month’s Bon Appetit magazine. How can you resist something called gunge? My version was a bit cheesy as I added to much cheese for the amount of spinach I had, oops. That will teach me to do math in my head while cooking. It was still a lovely accompaniment for baked chicken and potato salad.

Spinach Gunge (from Fergus Henderson via Bon Appetit)
2 lbs spinach, washed
¼ c butter
¼ c cream
1 tsp Dijon mustard
1 ½ c parmesan cheese, grated
Kosher salt and pepper

Melt the butter in a large pan. Add the spinach and wilt down. Pour in the cream, mustard and cheese and process the mixture with an immersion blender (or in a food processor or blender) until smooth. Season with salt and pepper. (There's no picture of this one as I served it for a supper with other people and it was all eaten before I could snap a picture).