Feeding Friendship: Spinach

This round it was my turn to pick our featured ingredient. You may want to be sitting down for this if you know me well...because I picked spinach.

It's the leafy green that I tolerate the best, mostly thanks to the good people of Italy and their insistence on putting it in delicious ravioli. I had seen some at the farmer's market recently, and decided to go for it. I thought about making said ravioli on my pasta machine (and I will, someday) but I ran across a recipe for Creamy Spinach Enchiladas on the Real Simple magazine Pinterest and my gut reaction was "yum!" so I decided to try them out. Their recipe calls for frozen chopped spinach, but I bought fresh (isn't fresh always better??) so I'm not sure I really had the correct amount of spinach they call for, but it worked out in the end. Also, their ingredient list includes items for a red cabbage salad that I (shockingly) didn't make, so if you decide to make this, don't just buy the whole list without realizing you'd be getting a salad too.

I started out by washing my spinach...and then washing it some more. Man, this stuff was gritty. Next, I chopped up all the leaves, removing all the large stems. Then I put in on my kitchen scale, hoping to reach the 10 oz the recipe calls for in the frozen bag, but my entire bunch was less than 6 oz when chopped, but still looked to me like a whole lot of spinach, so I just decided to go with what I had.

chopping the leaves

I put most of the spinach in a medium bowl and started adding the other ingredients: 1 cup of formerly frozen corn, 1 cup shredded cheddar cheese, and 1/2 a can of green chilis. Because I am a  wimp when it comes to spicy food and because it just seemed like a lot, I reduced the amount of canned chilis by half, using half in the filling and half a can on top of the enchiladas. I thought this worked out fine and kept them from overwhelming the dish. 

colorful filling ingredients

My favorite grocery store, Wegman's, has a new campaign touting the benefits of "eating the rainbow" to get all your daily fruits and veggies. I'm usually terribly about this and eat a lot of beige, so I was happy to have some colorful ingredients in my bowl. Next I gave them a good stir and started on the creamy sauce. Instead of a cup of heavy cream, I used light cream, and I'm sure you could use half & half too. Then you just add salt & pepper to taste. 

cream sauce

 Next, it's time to load up your tortillas. Now, the optimal tortilla size for this is 6-inch, as the recipe states, but I didn't pay attention to that and had 8-inchers. I therefore ended up making fewer, but bigger enchiladas than if I had smaller tortillas. No matter.

fill 'er up!

I Pam'd the Pyrex pan and then arranged them all seam side down so they wouldn't pop open. Last, I  poured the sauce over all the rolled tortillas, then added the final 1/2 cup of cheese and 1/2 can of chilis. 

ready for the oven 

You cook these the first 15-20 minutes with the pan covered with foil, then remove it for the last 10-15. About half an hour later, I pulled them from the oven. 

done!

I waited for them to cool for a few minutes and them plated them with some Goya Arroz Amarillo (my favorite). George put salsa on his, but I am a purist. 

doesn't look like the home of spinach, does it? 

Even though I thought these would be good, I was secretly afraid they would be too spinachy or that they wouldn't be filling enough as a meal. I was actually wrong and enjoyed these. George even said they were "a good dish," which is doing pretty well for something that's both green and vegetarian (ok maybe the tortillas were made with lard and are not technically vegetarian; I don't happen to care). These were quick and easy- even easier with frozen spinach- and would be a quick weeknight meal for anyone, which is why, I'm sure, that Real Simple published the recipe. I might throw some beans or rice in them next time or use a white Mexican cheese instead, but overall I was pretty pleased with how these worked out.  

Chocolate Chip Bread Pudding

You may remember that I discovered a lovely blog that taught me how to make challah bread (see I Holler for Challah, if you missed it). She mentions in her recipe that you can add dried fruit to your bread, which I have done before, but as soon as I read that, my mind immediately ran to chocolate. If you can insert dried fruit, surely you could do the same with chocolate chips. So, the other day I decided to test my theory by rolling the chips inside each of the 3 ropes that make the braided bread. This came out pretty well, but in the future I think I would sprinkle a few chips between the strands as I braid them, just to distribute a few more chips around. Unfortunately, we weren't doing a good job of eating this delicious bread very fast, and it was a little bit dry, so I feared that it would soon mold. Then I remembered how to save stale bread: bread pudding!

My very scientific search of the web found many bread pudding recipes, and a few chocolate bread pudding recipes, but no chocolate chip bread pudding recipes, so I decided to invent it. I used the "Best Bread Pudding with Vanilla Sauce" recipe on AllRecipes.com because vanilla sauce is very important to bread pudding, in my opinion, and because it didn't call for insane amounts of eggs. I then substituted out the cup of raisins for a cup of milk chocolate chips- who wants raisins in a chocolate dish? Not this kid. Here is the ingredient list for the bread pudding:

• 3 eggs, beaten

• 1 1/2 cups white sugar

• 2 tablespoons light brown sugar

• 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon

• 1/4 cup butter, melted

• 3 cups whole milk

• 10 slices hearty farmhouse-style bread, toasted and cut into cubes ...or chocolate chip challah

• 1 cup chocolate chips

I started out by cubing my remaining chocolate chip challah. I might cube them a bit smaller next time.

waste not, want not!

After turning the oven on at 375, I started to get the pudding ingredients in order in a large bowl. The bowl needs to fit you bread pieces later, so plan accordingly. You simply whisk together the eggs, milk, cinnamon, butter, and sugars- no need for electric beaters. 

ready for whisking

 Then add in your chocolate chips. The cinnamon mades the batter look spotty, not the chocolate.

chocolate time!

The recipe doesn't really call for it, but web consensus is to let your bread soak in the creamy pudding mixture for at least 10 minutes, if not longer. I stirred mine a couple of times to rotate which pieces were at the bottom, and to distribute the chocolate chips, which tend to sink. 

soaking time

While my bread was soaking and oven was warming, I got my ingredients ready for the vanilla sauce. You'll need: 

• 1/2 cup light brown sugar
• 1 tablespoon all-purpose flour
• 1 pinch ground cinnamon
• 1 egg
• 2 tablespoons butter, melted
• 1 1/4 cups whole milk
• 1 pinch salt
• 1 tablespoon vanilla extract

I melted the butter and kept it separate until I was ready to make the sauce, once the pudding was nearly done baking. It'll take around 10 minutes to thicken, so build that into your baking timeline so you won't have to wait on the sauce once the pudding is done. 

ready for action

Once the bread had soaked a while, I Pam'd a casserole dish and spooned the bread chunks into it, then poured the remaining liquid and chips over the whole thing. You don't want too much bread sticking out the top of the liquid or it may get overly brown. I baked for 25 minutes (convection) and then put the casserole lid on for the final 25. I took it off again at the end and cooked another 5-ish minutes until I was sure it was done. Checking for done-ness is a little tricky since a pudding is a bit liquidy and the chocolate complicates things, but I inserted a knife in the center and stopped cooking when it came out not completely dry, but mostly, and was pretty clean too. Here is the finished product: 

Mmmmm!

Extreme pudding closeup! 

After it cooled a little, I spooned portions into bowls and smothered them with the vanilla sauce. This was a little slice of heaven. It's not the most traditional bread pudding, but it's pretty darn tasty. 

Chocolate Chip Bread Pudding with Vanilla Sauce

Feeding Friendship: Strawberries

I was at the farmer's market a couple weeks ago when I smelled the fresh strawberries at a particular stand. Many sellers had strawberries, but only one smelled so amazing, so I had to buy some there. I decided to make a Martha Stewart recipe for strawberry cake to use them up and randomly decided to take pictures for the blog, so I was thrilled when Ellie chose strawberries as our ingredient.

These berries weren't the biggest, and many were shaped a little oddly, but they smelled and tasted great

So, at the risk of offending Ms. Stewart, I'm going to call this recipe "Strawberry Identity Crisis Cake" because it's a cake that seems like it should be a pie. It's made of fruit and baked in a pie pan, for Petey's sake! It should be pie! But it's not; it's delicious cake instead. Here are the ingredients:

6 Tbl unsalted butter, softened, plus more to grease pie plate

1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour

1 1/2 tsp. baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

1 cup + 2 Tbl sugar

1 large egg

1/2 cup milk

1 tsp vanilla extract

1 lb. strawberries (I think 3/4 lb would be fine, I had extra) 

First you preheat your oven, then sift together dry ingredients, per her directions at the link above. Making your batter in a stand mixer makes it so easy.

butter, sugar & egg

At some point you'll need to hull and halve your berries, and I whipped out my new kitchen scale so I would know when I had a pound ready to go. I like this scale because it does metric weights too.

right on the nose!

Then you pour your batter into your buttered pie plate and arrange the berries on top. I thought mine came out pretty:

pretty pie

Then you add your last 2 tablespoons of sugar on top. This seemed a little excessive to me, and I actually scrimped on the sugar a little (!), but in hindsight, the sugar forms this awesome sort of crunchy layer on top that reminds me of the life-changing gooey butter cake, so you may want to go whole hog on the sugar here. 

ready for the oven

My cake was looking so pretty and at this point I wondered why the one in Martha's photo looked like kind of a mess. Turns out that the batter sort of bubbles up and covers the berries, so your pretty pattern isn't going to matter much in the end product. Oh well. Around and hour (and several toothpick stabs) later, I pulled the cake out of the oven. We ate it straight, but it would be very good with either whipped cream or vanilla ice cream (or both, I won't tell). Here's the finished product:

slice of strawberry heaven

 I brought a piece in for my coworker who is leaving to go work overseas (sniffle) because I got sick and missed baking for her going away party. I asked her how she liked the cake and she said, "What did you put in it, crack?" ;) She offered to be my first online customer if I every opened a bakery. So, despite its  confused semi-pie status, this is one tasty cake. I recommend it!