Beef, Spinach & Fetta Gozleme

A tasty bread dough dinner I adapted from Recipes+ April 2010 issue.

Beef, Spinach & Fetta Gozleme
500g bread mix
2 tsp (7g) instant yeast
300ml lukewarm water

350g mince
1 onion, finely diced
1/3 cup char grilled red pepper strips, diced
1 tsp ground cumin
2 Tbsp tomato paste
1/4 cup water
2 Tbsp chopped celery leaves (or flat leaf parsley)
2 Tbsp finely chopped mint
150g baby spinach leaves, chopped
1/2 cup shredded mozzarella
200g fetta, crumbled

Place the first 3 ingredients in a bread machine on the dough cycle.

Heat a little oil in a large frying pan. Brown the mince, making sure to break up the lumps. Add the onion, red pepper, cumin, tomato paste and water. Simmer until the mixture thickens. Remove from heat. Add in the leaves. stir until the spinach wilts. Cool for at least 15 mins.

Combine the two cheeses in a bowl.

Divide the dough into 8 pieces. Taking one piece at a time, roll the dough out into an 18cm circle. It will be quite thin, but be careful not to tear the dough. Spread an 1/8th of the meat mixture over half the circle, leaving a border.Top with cheese mixture. Fold the other half of the dough over to make a sealed semi-circle. Make sure the dough and seams are well sealed, but not too thick, thick dough won't cook completely.

In a clean frying pan, heat a little oil over moderate heat.Fry the gozlemes one or two at a time, for 2-3 minutes a side or until golden. Use a spatula to flatten during cooking. Serve with salad for a balanced meal, or just give everyone two for a filling, unbalanced meal. ;)

Makes 8.

Spinach and Ricotta Lasagna

Time for another Cooks Clubs Challenge from the Taste.com.au forums!

Spinach and Ricotta Lasagna
Serves 4 – 6
Dried instant lasagna sheets or fresh ones
500g tub ricotta or cottage cheese
Bag of fresh spinach or box of frozen spinach
3 -4 spring onions
2 - 4 cloves garlic – according to taste
Nutmeg
Ground black pepper
1 Egg (optional but tends to keep its form better, hence easier to serve)
2 tbsp grated parmesan
Tomato pasta sauce – homemade or jar
Shredded cheese – cheddar, tasty or mozzarella or a combination

In a food processor, combine the spinach, (prepared as per pack if not fresh) roughly chopped spring onions and garlic, process until combined, add the ricotta or cottage cheese, egg, parmesan and a generous grind of nutmeg, a good grind of black pepper and process until combined.
Smear a layer of tomato pasta sauce on the bottom of a suitably sized baking dish. Cover with a layer of pasta. Then layer the cheese/spinach mixture alternately with pasta. Cheese layers should be approx ½ inch deep each.
Top with a layer of pasta then pour over the remaining tomato sauce.
Sprinkle with grated cheese
Bake at 180c for approx 40 minutes.

Fresh from the oven

My "proper" sized dish is in the freezer full of mac n cheese, so I had to be crafty with alfoil and a roasting tray. It still was a little too big though, so I only had enough tomato sauce for the half layer under the first layer of pasta, and one full layer in the middle. So there was no tomato sauce over the top, just a generous layer of grated tasty and mozzarella cheeses.

Check my funky loaf pan 'divider'!

It didn't suffer from that lack, although me forgetting to buy parmesan, and just skipping that DID make a difference - our spinach mixture was a little bland, but the Parmesan would have prevented that. We did use the egg, and it kept it's form wonderfully. All three kidlets wolfed this down, and I quite liked it too. If DP likes it, we have a make again dinner to add to the list. This was so easy and quick to make!

Antipasto Mac n Cheese

This is very loosely based on a pasta bake recipe from Taste.com.au. I've made this before, as the original incarnation - learning from this experience, this time I used regular pasta, and just doubled the amount I'd use to feed my family. (Which is a full pack per meal!) This recipe will make 2 pasta bakes, or one pasta bake, and 4 1/2 bowls of pasta. (I couldn't be bothered with the bake bit tonight lol)

Antipasto Mac n Cheese
1kg pasta
120g butter
1/2 cup plain flour
4 cups milk
3 cups grated cheddar cheese
250g rindless bacon, diced
250g fire roasted capsicum
1 stick celery, sliced thinly
150g semi dried tomato strips, drained
100g baby spinach
3 tsp mustard

Preheat oven to 180°C. Cook pasta in a large pot of boiling, salted water, following packet directions until tender.

Meanwhile, fry bacon and celery in a saucepan, until golden. Add the capsicum and tomato strips and stir for a few more minutes. Put into a covered bowl and set aside.

Melt butter in the same saucepan over medium heat. When foaming, add flour. Cook, stirring, for 30 seconds. Remove from heat. Add half the milk SLOWLY while whisking until smooth. Add remaining milk and whisk to combine. Return pan to high heat. Cook, stirring with a wooden spoon, for 3 minutes or until sauce comes to the boil and thickens. (it's probably longer because there is more sauce) Remove from heat.

Stir in 2 cups cheese and mustard. Season with salt and pepper. Tip in bacon mixture. If mixture has liquid pooling in the bottom of the bowl, strain that off first. Mix gently through the sauce, then fold in spinach. The heat will wilt down the spinach, so just be patient with it.

Drain pasta and return to pot. Add sauce. Stir to combine. Spoon into 2 7-cup capacity baking dishes. Sprinkle with remaining cheese. Bake for 25 to 30 minutes or until golden. Serve.

Uncooked (or cooked) pasta bakes can be frozen in a baking dish if covered. Allow to defrost thoroughly before cooking as directed.

Mt kids are such foodies. Here is Master One picking out his semi dried tomatoes, so he can eat them first!

So Yummy Risotto

Due to both my local supermarkets not having any sage in stock, and an abundance of other substitutions, I'm going to post this recipe as I made it, and not the original from the cookbook.

Pumpkin, Tarragon & Baby Spinach Risotto
Based on the Squash, sage and walnut risotto from Slow Cooking by Katie Bishop
1 kg butternut squash, peeled, deseeded, cut into 2-3cm cubes
4 sprigs Tarragon
1 red onion, peeled, halved, thinly sliced
2 tsp minced garlic
2 Tbsp olive oil (I used garlic infused)
350g risotto rice
1.3L chicken stock
100g baby spincah leaves
Freshly grated Parmesan to serve

Place the pumpkin, tarragon, onion and garlic in the dish of your slow cooker. Drizzle with the oil. Cover with the lid and cook on HIGH for 2 hours, stirring once halfway through. Pumpkin should be just tender. Add the rice and stock, stirring through, but be careful not to smoosh the pumpkin. Reduce heat to LOW and cook for another 1 1/2 to 2 hours. Turn the heat off, and stir through the spinach leaves. Season with sea salt and freshly ground pepper, and serve topped with plenty of shaved Parmesan. Serves 6.

The name comes from Miss Four, who proclaimed it as such, and who thought the original, more descriptive title was too much of a mouthful.

This was an entry for
The Cookbook Challenge: Week 19 - Rice.

Poached Chicken Pasta with Feta & Baby Spinach

Sounds Posh doesn't it? Thankfully the recipe isn't hard like you expect with a posh named dish. I pretty much made this up so I didn't have to get more than one pot dirty. Course, I cheated with a jar of ready made sauce, but if you have aversions to ready made sauce, you are welcome to make your own, and go through the rigmarole of bottling it, or at least freezing and defrosting it. Me, I'm very fond of the flavour and chunky vegetables in the Aldi brand Garden Vegetable pasta sauce, and it's cheap too.

Master One has no problems with bottled sauce!

Poached Chicken Pasta with Feta & Baby Spinach
1 pkt pasta shells/penne/spirals
a couple of splashes of Maggi
400g thinly sliced chicken (breast or thighs, whatever's on hand)
small head broccoli, cut into florets
100g baby spinach
2 spring onions, finely sliced
1/4 cup feta, crumbled
1 jar tomato based pasta sauce

Put a large pot of salted water on the stove. Add the Maggi and the pasta straight away. When the water comes to a boil, stir the pasta. Slice the chicken and tip into the pot. Chop up the broccoli and add that to the pot when the pasta has about 3-4 minutes left to cook. When the pasta is cooked to your satisfaction, drain and return to the pot. Throw the spinach in on top of the pasta. Use a pair of kitchen scissors to chop the spring onions on the diagonal - it's much easier than slicing them with a knife. Toss them into the pot too, along with the feta and sauce. Stir everything up until it is well combined, then serve. Season individually with freshly cracked pepper, and salt to taste, if needed.


Don't forget to get messy with your young 'uns for Kids In The Kitchen, training our next generation of food bloggers! ;)

Pork, Mushroom & Baby Spinach Risotto

Aborio rice, and beef stock, cooked in the microwave.
Mushrooms and pork, sauteed in a frying pan, with baby spinach added at the end so it just wilts and goes bright green.
Combine the two at the end of cooking.
God, I'm a cheat's cook if there ever was one!

DP had noodles

Don't forget to think (and cook!) pink for the Virtual Night In, raising money and awareness for Breast Cancer Research.

Chicken & Roast Potato Salad

Chicken & Roast Potato Salad
500g chicken tenderloins
190g Capsicum & eggplant pasta sauce
120g baby spinach & rocket mix
1 head broccoli
10 - 15 baby potatoes (I used one of those microwave packs, that come with butter and parsley, but we could have used a lot more potato)

Preheat the oven to 190C.
Drown the chicken in the pasta sauce, and leave in the fridge for an hour. Microwave the potatoes until almost cooked. If using the prepacked baby spuds with butter and herbs, just follow the pack directions. Once removed from the microwave, coat the potatoes in a little butter and herbs, a dash of soy (if you like that sort of thing), and cut in halves. Place in the oven to roast. About 30 minutes should do it.
Trim the broccoli into florets and steam in the microwave.
After the chicken has been marinating for an hour, place a frypan on high heat. Give it a light but generous spray of oil. Fry the chicken until cooked through, turning at least once. Break the chicken into little bite sized pieces. Thisa will also let you see if it's cooked all the way through.
Toss everything into a large salad bowl, including your leaves. Season with a touch of salt and freshly ground pepper if you desire.

Hay, Hay, It's Donna Day: Parmesan and Polenta Chicken

Another blog event from Stephanie at Dispensing Happiness: Hay, Hay, It's Donna Day. This is actually round 28, as you can see over at Chez Us. You might remember around this time last year my Triple Choc Pancakes for an earlier round of the same event. What follows is how I made mine, go and check out Stephanie's post for the original recipe, this would be great any way you made it!
(as I found out in the round up)

We had a lovely sunny spring day here today, so this went down great. Although Master One spat his out and made me heat up a can of pumpkin risotto, and Miss Three left most of her leaves behind. But it was a beautiful, fresh, light meal, and would be great for entertaining. I served with it garlic ciabatta rolls, and even had an Apple & Pink Grapefruit mineral water and Vodka with mine, very posh indeed.

Parmesan and Polenta Chicken
500g chicken tenderloins
flour for dusting
2 eggs, lightly whisked
1/2 cup polenta
1/3 cup finely grated parmesan cheese
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
400g baby spinach leaves
one bunch basil, leaves only
1 cup of frozen corn kernals

Combine the parmesan and polenta. (depending on the size of your tenders, you may run a little short like I did, just top up the bowl by sight near the end of coating if you find that happening). Put the corn in a microwave container and heat on high for 2 minutes. Put the leaves in a big bowl.
Dust the tenderloins with the flour, dip into the egg & press into the combined parmesan & polenta to coat. Heat the oil in a non-stick frying pan over medium heat & cook the chicken for 2-3 minutes each side or until golden & cooked through. Set aside to barely cool. Toss the warm corn through the salad leaves. Slice the chicken into small strips, and add to the salad. Smell that awesome sweet smell of the basil as the hot chicken and corn warm the leaves. MMM, heaven.

This is perfect for entertaining... if only we entertained more often!

We don't dress salads in this house very often, but if you do, here is the dressing that goes with:

2 teaspoons Dijon mustard
2 tablespoons lemon juice
1 clove garlic, crushed
1 tablespoon olive oil
2 teaspoons honey
sea salt and cracked black pepper

Place everything in a bowl and whisk to combine. Pour over the salad and top with shaved parmesan, just before serving.

Slow Cooker Pork Casserole with Soy Roasted Potatoes

I knew posting all those recipes yesterday was a good idea. Those Roasted Baby Potatoes with Soy, Butter and Parsley sunk deep, deep into my brain. So when I went shopping last night, I thought ooh, I see discounted sliced mushrooms, and baby spinach, and baby potatoes... I know what I can do with all that. And I did know. I did all this.

Don't you love having a black slow cooker that is impossible to photograph well?

Slow Cooker Pork Casserole
500g pork, diced
1 onion, chunky diced
3 carrots, sliced
1 stick celery, diced
375g mushrooms, sliced
100g baby spinach
175g pk Masterfoods Farmhouse Chicken Casserole base

Throw everything into your slow cooker except for the spinach. Stir thoroughly to coat in the sauce. Cook on LOW for 6-8 hours, or HIGH for 4 hours. In the last 20 minutes of cooking, remove the lid. Stir everything around, then evenly pile on the spinach leaves. Leave the top off until cooking is finished, then serve.

Roast Potatoes... *drool*

These weren't exactly as seen on For the love of cooking, as I had no parsley, so I used just a smidgin of tarragon. I don't recommend the tarragon, and I think I might use just a bit less oil and/or butter next time. They were a little oily for me, but that may have just been because I was out of olive oil, and had to use canola. They were still very tasty though.

Leftover Pasta

I used the leftovers from Wednesday's Pizza Braid to make a simple but tasty pasta. Pizza sauce, baby spinach and cherry tomatoes tossed with cooked corkscrew pasta, and topped with a little mozzarella cheese. Too easy.

Pork, Mushroom & Spinach Pasta Carbonara

Not really a recipe tonight. I just fried up some mushrooms with some pork strips, added a jar of carbonara sauce once browned, and topped with baby spinach. Once the pasta was cooked I stirred the lot together. Not much to say when you cheat with the sauce.
...Look! A distraction!

Chicken Parmagiana, Spaghetti Carbonara with Spinach, and Garlic Bread

I wanted to have a recipe here for you tonight, I really did, but our menu conspired against me. Bought crumbed chicken, fried, topped with bought pasta sauce, shaved ham, and cheese, baked. Bought garlic bread, baked. Spaghetti, boiled, drained, coated in bought carbonara sauce, and then a bag of baby spinach thrown in to wilt from the heat of the pasta. Served.

It was kinda real cooking, and I won't belittle anyone by saying you are all too smart to need an exact recipe for this, but I'd feel like I was cheating if I gave an exact recipe for this. Photo or not, this is a lazy dinner, and really therefore deserves linkage.

The 5 Most Embarrassing Failures in the History of Terrorism
Make sure you read on to the second page, there is a picture of a newspaper headline that deserves some kind of award. I'm not sure if there is such a type of award, but if there is, I'd vote for it!

Tomato & Basil Chicken with Spinach and Soba Noodles

Seems a meal doesn't always have to be complicated or include fancy ingredients to create a real plate cleaner, like tonight's dinner tossed together from items on sale today.

Chicken with Noodles
1/2 Tomato & Basil roast chicken from Safeway Deli (any roast chook would do, but it's tasty!)
270g pk soba noodles
160g fresh spinach leaves
1 onion
5-6 drops Maggi liquid seasoning
1 tsp black bean sauce
1-2 tbsp water

Chop the onion, and slowly sautee in a pan. Remove the skin and bones from the chicken, and chop the flesh. When the onion has gone translucent, add the chicken, frying over medium heat.
Cook the noodles in a pan of rapidly boiling water for about 3 minutes, then drain and rinse with hot water (not cold like the packet says).
Add the seasoning and sauce to the frypan, and use the water to deglaze the chicken bits off the bottom if necessary. Add in the spinach, and allow to wilt down before adding in the drained noodles. Fry rapidly over high heat until the noodles are hot again, then serve immediately.

Spinach and Pumpkin Lasagna

It's been a while since I took part in a Cooks Club Challenge. This is the recipe taken straight from the forum over at Taste.Com.Au

Spinach and Pumpkin Lasagna
baby spinach
½ pumpkin, sliced
1 red onion, sliced
2 tbsp butter
2 tbsp flour
2 cups milk
2 cups tasty cheese, grated
1 cup mozzarella cheese, grated
1 ½ cups parmesan cheese, grated
4 cloves garlic, crushed
Salt & pepper
1 tsp nutmeg
1 tub philly cream cheese
Lasagna sheets

Melt butter in saucepan, add flour, nutmeg, salt & pepper. Stir until smooth. Add milk and stir over medium heat until sauce thickens. Add cream cheese, garlic and 1 cup of tasty cheese. Stir until melted. Place a layer of pumpkin slices in base of a roasting dish. Add a layer of silverbeet and a layer of onions. Spoon 1/3 of sauce over veges. Sprinkle with a little parmesan. Top with lasagna sheets. Repeat until all ingredients are used up, ending with cheese sauce. Mix remaining cheeses together and sprinkle evenly over lasagna. Bake at 200C for 40 minutes or until browned on top

This is one of my all time favourites - so handy to have in the freezer - just pull out and heat and serve - yum. You can also add bacon to the layers for a carnivore who just won't eat it without some meat.

The white sauce took ages to thicken, so the kids ended up having sandwiches, and DP and I ate this after the kids were in bed. There was heaps left, enough for everyone to have some tomorrow for lunch. I loved the pumpkin in it, but not too fond of the spinach in it. I used to love baby spinach, but I'm starting to go off it now - tastes too metallic-y to me. I ate it a lot and never minded the taste when I was pregnant, I guess my body just needed the iron so it tasted good then. I might experiment with other vegies instead of the spinach, maybe zucchini would go nicely.

Cheesy Spinach & Mushroom Spaghetti

Since today's lunch at the ILs got called off due to illness, I thought we might need something a little more substantial than jaffles. But since we still haven't done the fortnightly shop yet, I was a little limited as to what I could make.

I settled on pasta - two votes for spaghetti over the penne, and used up some leftover baby spinach, and neglected mushrooms from the bottom of the fridge. Add a few cloves of sliced garlic and some cream cheese, and regular cheese, and what more could you ask for?

All I did was set the water on the boil for the pasta, and when that boiled, added the spaghetti and boiled till soft. My family prefer their pasta on the soggy side, not al dente. While that was happening, I lightly fried 4 cloves of garlic I'd sliced, along with about 8 large mushrooms (just normal large, not the huge flat ones), also sliced. Then I added roughly 3 tbsp of cream cheese, and a bit of the pasta water. Mixed it until it was nice, added in, hmm, maybe 3 cups of baby spinach? I didn't measure, it was just everything left in the packet. Add it to taste, or whatever you have. Then add about half a cup or more of grated cheese right before you tip the (drained) spaghetti into the frypan. Mix together and quickly serve before your pan gets coated in melted cheese and all yuck to clean up.

The finished sauce before adding pasta

Baby Spinach Alfredo Fettucine.

Master Four just couldn't wait long enough for me to take a photo!

Ok, so I cheated a little, but this was a great meal, and if you don't include the water, only needed 5 ingredients: milk, butter, alfredo pasta and sauce packet mix, cheese and baby spinach.
Considering I bought the pasta from Aldi, it was still pretty cheap too!

Really good pasta with creamy sauce.

White wine and Garlic pasta with baby spinach and broccoli

Pasta with broccoli

I half cheated tonight. I used a jar of Dolmio Chicken White wine and Garlic sauce, but instead of frying up some chicken, I fried 3 short cut rashers of bacon, a roughly chopped onion, and 7 smallish button mushrooms. I had 500g of pasta on to boil with a head of broccoli which had been chopped into small florets.

Bacony goodies (before sauce)

After the bacony goodies had browned nicely, I added the sauce, stirred till mixed through, then thinned it down with approx a cup and a half of pasta water, and a half a cup of milk. Stirred through till it was a nice texture again (I added the water in 3 batches btw), and then threw in 2 small handfuls of baby spinach leaves. Then I finished draining the pasta/broccoli, and added that to the pan too, over the heat, so the sauce would coat the pasta evenly.

All in the pan

Served with a sprinkle of tasty cheese, but it really, really needed some freshly grated parmesan - which we didn't have. We didn't even have stinky pre-grated cannister parmesan, but we weren't missing much there. I made do with a grind of fresh pepper, and a generous sprinkle of salt, which really boosted the flavour, but made the whole thing very thirst inducing. Ah well, you make do with what you've got right?

There was even enough for one meal of leftovers!

Baby Spinach & Mushroom Bosccaiola

Sorry for the particularly bad photo tonight, the flash glared off the cheese. And I did see this at the time, but I was too hungry, and it smelt too good, to stop and try and get a better photo.

Another very simple dinner tonight, and yes, I cheated again a little. I boiled up a full (500g) pack of fettucine in a large pot of salted water, as you do, and while that was cooking I made the sauce. There was some leftover chopped onion from the calzones yesterday, about 3/4 of one, along with 2 or 3 mushrooms that had been halved and then sliced, and the smallest handful of chopped green capsicum. I sliced up another 4 mushrooms, and lightly fried the lot. I had a packet of Continental Mushroom Bosccaiola sauce mix, which required 1 1/2 cups of milk to be mixed with it, and then I threw that in the pan too.

I thinned it out with a bit of the pasta water, since the sauce cooked faster than the pasta, and got a little too thick, but found upon tasting it needed something. In hindsight, I think a few rashers of friend and chopped bacon was it, but I used about 1 1/2 tablespoons of french mustard, and got a passable result Add in about 3 cups (or maybe 2 - I don't know, I never measured it, just went, 'yeah, that'll be enough' in the supermarket) of baby spinach and there you have it. The kids ate it, the adults (as usual) had no comment, except for DP's remark of 'fettucine always needs bacon' when I finally figured out what was missing. Well, now I know don't I?

Fusilli

To be more precise, it was Fusilli with Creamy tomato, mushroom and pinenut sauce, served with baby spinach that had been panfried with bacon and onion.

As complicated as all that sounds, it wasn't. The sauce was a Leggo's stir through sauce, thinned out with a bit of pasta water, and a healthy (or not so healthy, as the case may be) dollop of cream. Which was added to the pan after I fried some onion and bacon until golden and crispy respectively, then I added the baby spinach.

The kids love baby spinach. Even though Master Three insisted on calling it bok choy, and wanted to know where 'the rest of it' (the white stem part) was. Ah well, he ate the whole plate full without any prompting, threats of withheld dessert or anything. That happened with the Lemon Honey Chicken we had too... which had bok choy in it. Perhaps I should try serving more leafy green, instead of green beans or peas. Miss Two is wild about broccoli, and that's coming up a lot in the next two weeks, because I've been wanting it, but Master Three can be hit and miss with that.

Apart from bok choy and spinach, does anyone know of other green leafy vegetables? Preferably autumn or winter foods, since it's starting to get cold here, and I am trying to eat more local food, to increase shelf life, vitamin levels, and reduce the carbon footprint. That, and in season food tends to be a bit cheaper. Leave a comment, let me know!