in a rut

I was in a bit of a cooking rut this week - and what I ended up cooking, and what we ended up eating was mostly a riff on this recipe that I found in Bon Appetit this month. Now I'd love to be in Tuscany, eating the lovely food profiled in the article but as I'm not, this had to do. We had it pretty much as written last Sunday night,

along with some tacos. Mine were salmon, my husband's were chicken. The following night, I still had zucchini and potatoes along with some corn, so I made the same thing with corn added and served alongside sausages. A couple of nights later I still had potatoes and corn and a big bunch of kale, so I made it into a hash and put poached eggs on top.

Potato and Kale hash with poached egg (inspired by Ruth Rogers in Bon Appetit)

6-8 small new potatoes, diced
olive oil
1 medium orange pepper, diced
1 bunch kale, stems stripped off, slivered
2 ears of corn, kernels cut off
4-6 large button mushrooms, sliced
2 cloves of garlic, minced
1 tsp dried thyme

Heat about 2 tbsp oil in a large saute pan, and add the potatoes. Let the potatoes sit for about 3-4 minutes and then turn. Cook for another 5 or more minutes, until tender. Remove the potatoes to a bowl.

Add another tbsp of oil to the pan, add the peppers, mushrooms, garlic and kale and saute until tender. Add the corn kernels at the last minutes and move around the pan to heat up. Add the thyme. Add the potatoes back in and let meld together for a minute or so. Keep warm while poaching the eggs. Serve the hash with a poached egg on top of each serving.

It's a pretty good rut to be in.

chard, ricotta and mushroom lasagna

The other night there wasn’t anything on TV that grabbed my attention, so I picked up some back issues of Bon Appetit magazine that were sitting beside me in my catch all basket. I came across a recipe for Ginger cookies which I earmarked to make. But while in the kitchen the other day to make the cookies, I realized the recipe called for vegetable shortening which I don’t normally have in my cupboards so I put that to one side. But I did see this recipe in the same issue. And as we love chard and mushrooms in this house, and I had some lasagna sheets, I made this for supper the other night. I was a bit concerned it was going to taste very similar to this which features a chard and mushroom mixture as well, but it was quite different and just as lovely.

 

Swiss Chard Lasagna with Mushrooms and Ricotta (adapted from Bon Appetit)

2 ½ c milk and vegetable stock mixed
6 tbsp (3/4 stick) butter
¼ c all purpose flour
½ tsp kosher salt
½ tsp ground nutmeg
1 large bunch Swiss chard, center rib and stem cut from each leaf
250g frozen mixed greens (chopped kale, mustard greens and collard greens)
2 tbsp olive oil
½ large red onion, chopped
2 large garlic cloves, chopped, divided
kosher salt
Freshly ground pepper
1 lb crimini and button mushrooms, sliced
¼ tsp ground nutmeg
fresh lasagna noodles
500 g container whole-milk ricotta cheese
1 c grated soft farmers cheese
8 tbsp finely grated Parmesan cheese

Melt butter in heavy large saucepan over medium-low heat. Add flour and milk and whisk to blend. Cook for about 5 minutes, whisking until the flour and butter are completely blended. Season with nutmeg, salt and pepper and bring to simmer. Cook until the sauce is thickened.

Heat the oil in a medium saucepan and add the onion and garlic. Sauté until the onion is tender, 3 to 4 minutes. Add the sliced mushrooms and remaining garlic and saute until the mushrooms are brown and tender. Add in the sliced chard and the rest of the greens and season with salt, pepper and nutmeg.

Spread about 3 tbsp of sauce into the bottom of a greased 9x13 baking dish. Lay one layer of noodles over the sauce. Spread half of chard/mushroom mixture over the pasta. Drop half of the ricotta over in dollops and spread in even layer. Sprinkle with half of farmers cheese, then 4 tablespoons Parmesan and then spread 3/4 cup of béchamel over. Repeat layering with the noodles, remaining chard and mushrooms, ricotta, farmers cheese, Parmesan, and 3/4 cup béchamel. Cover with noodles and remaining béchamel.



Preheat oven to 375°F. Bake lasagna covered 30 minutes. Uncover and bake until heated through and top is golden brown, 15 to 20 minutes longer (I turned the broiler on for a couple of minutes to get the top brown). Let stand 15 minutes before serving.

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).