Spiralizer Week: Day Two: Zucchini Noodles with Chicken, Feta and Spinach

Day two saw me head to my usual Tuesday night Sh'Bam exercise class, so I was in need of a little more protein than a vegetarian meal would provide. Earlier in the day I bought a whole chicken and diced the breasts, so we could easily put this together after my class. (Oh, things that are going to be impossible when I am working in the office again!)

I have no idea what cuisine this was supposed to be, I just nabbed it from this blog. I replaced the spinach with sweet potato leaves from my garden, since they are totally out of control, and are much tastier and less soggy than spinach. Overall it was pretty tasty, if not super-memorable. The noodles are still fun!

Pasta with Meatballs

My last meal of Being Twenty-Nine Years Old: a big classic in our family, but we all have slightly different ways of making it. My mum drops pure-mince meatballs into the tomato sauce, letting them cook through as the sauce thickens on the stove; I use fried or baked meatballs containing bread (I love the crispy crust!). My sister likes to stir the spinach into the sauce and scatter feta over the top; I prefer it to combine cooked, wilted spinach with ricotta and leave little quinelles throughout the bake. However, I think we can all agree that penne is exactly the right pasta for this dish, and that it tastes even better the next day. Although maybe not in my case, what with my taste buds suddenly going over the hill...

Here's my version.

Ingredients

• 1kg of meatballs
• 500g tomato sauce (or double, if you like it very tomato-y)
• two large bunches of fresh spinach, wilted and chopped or 250g frozen chopped spinach, defrosted
• 250g of ricotta cheese
• 1/2 tsp nutmeg
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 500g dried penne, cooked according to the packet instructions
• 100g Cheddar or Parmesan, grated

Combine the spinach, cheese, nutmeg and salt together in a bowl. Stir the pasta with the tomato sauce and meatballs and pour into a large baking dish. Using two large tablespoons, take scoops of the ricotta/spinach mixture and push little quinelles into the dish. Scatter over the grated cheese and bake for 25 minutes at 180 C, until golden brown on top and piping hot throughout.

Palak Raita (Spinach with Yoghurt and Spices)

I'm going through a big spinach phase at the moment. There's no better way to prepare it than to wash it thoroughly (grit is HORRIBLE!) pile it into a big saucepan and cook it in the rinsing water for a few minutes, then squeeze it out completely and use or serve as soon as you can. I like it very simply dressed with olive oil, a squeeze of lemon, and a generous dusting of salt.

Tonight's curry calls for a more robust treatment, and fortunately my Giant Asian Cookbook is ready to provide. They start by cooking the spinach in exactly the same way I do - so really it's just the dressing that changes.

Ingredients

• a big bunch of spinach, cooked as described above
• 1 tbsp ghee or butter
• 1 tsp black mustard seeds
• 1 tsp cumin seeds
• 1 tsp ground cumin
• 1/2 tsp fenugreek seeds or ground fenugreek
• 1/2 tsp salt
• a pinch of cayenne pepper (optional)
• 250g plain yoghurt

Fry the mustard seeds in the ghee or butter at a low heat  until they start to pop, Add the cumin seeds, ground cumin and fenugreek, and stir fry with a wooden spoon until the spices colour - but be careful not to burn them. Remove from the heat, and add the salt and cayenne, if using, then allow to cool. Swirl the spinach, yoghurt and spice mixture together in a bowl; serve cold or at room temperature (more fragrant).

Steak and Blue Cheese Sandwich

Super-indulgent, super-fast Sunday lunch!

Ingredients

• a medium porterhouse or rump steak
• a large bunch of spinach
• a medium wedge of blue cheese
• fresh granary bread

Season the steak on both sides, then pan fry in a smudge of oil until rare (90 seconds per side). Set aside to rest. Meanwhile, wash the spinach thoroughly and remove any tough stalks. Place in a large saucepan, still wet; cover with a lid and steam in its own juices for 2-3 minutes, until wilted. Remove and put in a colander; squeeze out the water with a spatula, or, when cool enough, your hands; finely chop. Cut the warm steak against the grain into thin slices.

Reheat the steak pan and, using the oil still in the pan, lightly toast each slice of bread on one side. Onto one toasted side, slice pieces of blue cheese, then top with spinach and steak; close with another toasted side facing in. Repeat for another sandwich, or two. Slice diagonally and serve immediately!

Mushroom, Spinach and Feta Pizza

New toppings for a classic pizza! I used a slightly spicier tomato sauce by adding a pinch of chilli pepper flakes to our usual recipe at the start, so it became imbued with a lovely warmth. The sauce went straight on the base, then sliced and sauteed field mushrooms and finally cubed goat feta - the sharpest we can find in Australia. After 15 minutes, we threw on a handful of spinach for the final five minutes' baking in order to gently wilt it and bring out the earthy flavour. A quick season and it was ready for devouring.

Maybe a little bit more than a handful of spinach...

Mushroom and Spinach Pancakes with Goats Cheese

I was planning to make a mushroom and goats cheese pizza or calzone this week, but today I was pleasantly surprised to find that it was Pancake Day! It's not as celebrated here as in the UK - probably because cooking a stack of pancakes on a hot stove when it's 40C outside is not a smart move. It's unusually cool this summer - just 28C this evening - so it wasn't too hot to make pancakes instead.

I googled for a recipe to convert my pizza topping into crepe filling, and stumbled across a lovely blog, Closet Cooking, which appears to be run by a guy called Kevin, cooking in a kitchen the size of a closet. I remember those days well! I love using blog recipes because they're made by real people, with real ingredients, and usually around the time constraints of a real job and in a real kitchen. So you know that it's doable in a sensible amount of time, and you're not going to find that the whole thing depends on some obscure ingredient or kitchen implement. So I followed Kevin's excellent recipe for yummy vegetarian savoury filling for whole-wheat pancakes, and they were spot-on. I did change just a couple of things so I've reblogged the recipe with my changes. My only mistake was not tripling the batter so that I'd have to make sweet pancakes :)

Ingredients:
For the filling:

• 1 tablespoon oil
• 1 onion
• 2 cloves garlic
• 1 tablespoon butter
• 500g mushrooms
• a few sprigs of thyme, stripped to their leaves
• 250g frozen chopped spinach
• salt and pepper to taste
• 1 splash dry sherry, or splash white wine + 1tsp of sugar
• 1/2 cup balsamic vinegar 
• 6 wholewheat crepes
• 1 large handful goat cheese, crumbled

For the pancakes (makes 6):

• 1/2 cup whole wheat flour
• 1/2 cup plain white flour
• 2 eggs
• 1/2 cup milk
• 1/2 cup water
• 1/8 teaspoon salt
• 1 tbsp vegetable oil

Set your spinach defrosting (in the microwave or on the hob).

Whisk all the batter ingredients together to create the pancake batter and start making crepes. You'll probably find that the chaff of the wholewheat flour sinks to the bottom, so try to ladle up the lower layer occasionally, and add a little water toward the end if you find that the batter becomes too thick.

Drain the spinach well, in a sieve. Crush it a bit with your hands to get all the water out.

Finely chop the onion and gently fry until soft and turning golden, about 8 minutes. Slice the mushrooms thinly. Crush the garlic and add it, the butter, the mushrooms and the thyme to the onions, then sweat for a further 6-10 minutes, until the mushrooms have let out their liquid. Add the spinach and season well with pepper, and a little salt; warm through. Reduce the balsamic vinegar in a small saucepan - it takes a couple of minutes.

Fold the crepes into little pockets and scoop in the filling, tucking in crumbled goats cheese as you go. Drizzle over the balsamic reduction and serve!

Cannellini and Coppa salad

I followed this one from Nigel, and was a little disappointed. The flavours just didn't quite mesh the way I expected them to. It's possible that we added way too much spinach, but his portion sizes were just tiny, and I knew we'd be hungry, so I added eight handfuls instead of four. Or maybe we should have used watercress instead, which would have had a lot more flavour. I also found that the olives were so big that we ended up eating them individually, and they rather overwhelmed the subtle cannelloni and herbs. I've added a few suggestions to modify the original recipe, especially the dressing, which was much weaker than it should have been. I think the whole thing would work better with tomatoes instead of olives; maybe I'll try that in future. Oh and croutons are very good with this, preferably toasted with garlic since there's none in the dressing.

Ingredients:

This does NOT look like the version in Kitchen Diaries.

• a tin of cannellini beans
• a bag of mixed spinach, watercress and other flavourful leaves
• a large handful of basil leaves
• 75g thinly sliced coppa or prosciutto
• a handful of black olives, pitted and quartered, or, a handful of cherry tomatoes, pitted and quartered
• 6 tbsp olive oil
• 4 tbsp red wine vinegar
• 2 tbsp dijon mustard
• 1 tsp grain mustard
• 2 tbsp fresh thyme leaves

Drain the beans, wash and spin the salad and basil leaves, and shake up all the dressing ingredients. Nigel suggests marinading the olives in the dressing but I found it made absolutely no difference since olives are so strongly-flavoured anyway. I'd just toss the whole lot together and top with croutons. Should be better with the mods :)

Guest Dish: Tray-Baked Chicken and Crushed Pots

This weekend we visited a friend of ours from our college days in Cambridge, and his lovely girlfriend. On the Friday night, I was totally zonked from driving for four hours during one of the busiest times of year, so couldn't help make any dinner. But it was no problem; he prepared this meal single-handedly in about half an hour, and it was absolutely delicious. I think it's a Jamie Oliver recipe; the SO guessed immediately because of the presence of cherry tomatoes. I've reconstructed the recipe from the dish itself, and portioned it for two.

Ingredients:

• 2 chicken breasts
• 4-6 slices of streaky bacon
• a handful of cherry tomatoes on the vine
• fresh tarragon, thyme and rosemary
• a few cloves of garlic
• 4-6 medium waxy potatoes
• 2-3 spring onions
• a big bag or bunch of fresh spinach
• a few tbsp crème fraîche

Preheat your grill to a high setting. Wrap the bacon around the chicken and in a non-stick pan, sear it quickly to seal the flesh. Place in a wide casserole dish or baking tray, add the cherry tomatoes on the vine, the fresh tarragon and thyme, crush in the garlic, and toss with a little olive oil. Grill for 10 minutes each side, until the bacon is crisp and the chicken is cooked through.

Meanwhile, parboil the whole potatoes for about 5 minutes, until just beginning to show tenderness. Sautee them whole with the rosemary, in olive oil over a moderate heat, and crush them downward with a potato-masher to break them into flattened ovoids. Turn once or twice so that you get plenty of good crispy bits.

Roughly chop the spring onions and sautee in a little olive oil. Rinse the spinach, add to the spring onions, cover and cook it briefly in its own juices. Remove, squeeze out the water, return to the pan, stir through the crème fraîche and heat through. Dash over a grating of nutmeg and season to taste.