baby spinach – Ali Does It Herself

Spinach and Mushroom Stuffing

We made this for our Canadian Thanksgiving celebrations, but maybe the next time you cook up a turkey (say, for American Thanksgiving, or Christmas, or various other turkey-related feast days), you could try this stuff(ing) out. You can make it all the day before and chuck it together at the last minute, which is awesome for big dinners. It’s also the kind of stuffing that doesn’t actually go into the bird, so you can feed it to vegetarians, too!

Start with your bread. You can buy bags of pre-cut, pre-toasted bread chunks specifically for making stuffing, but I kind of like to make them myself, because I can decide what kind of bread I’m going to use in my stuffing. Here I used a loaf of Italian sourdough.

I ripped each slice up into bite-sized chunks and spread them out across two baking sheets. Shove them in your oven and bake them at 350°F until they’re dried out and lightly toasted, about 12 minutes. Make sure to stir them occasionally.

Dice up about a pound of fresh mushrooms. The wilder the better. Unfortunately all we had around were some oyster and regular white mushrooms, but feel free to experiment. You should have about 9 cups diced mushrooms when you’re done.

Chop up as well 2 large onions, so you’re left with about 3 cups chopped onions in total.

And while you’re at it, go to town on 4-5 stalks celery, ending up with about 2 cups chopped celery in total.

Find yourself some herbs. These were all growing in our fall garden: sage, parsley, and thyme. I thought about adding some rosemary to add to the “Scarborough Fair”-ness of the whole thing but managed to restrain myself.

Chop up a couple bunches of each. You can never have too many fresh herbs in your stuffing, so just go with what feels right.

Dump 1/4 cup of butter and a tablespoon or so of olive oil in a large skillet and melt over medium heat.

Plop in your mushrooms and sprinkle them lightly with salt and pepper. Sauté those suckers until they’re all squishy and starting to brown, about 8 minutes. Dump them in a large bowl for now.

Slide another 1/2 cup butter into that skillet and let that melt.

Add in your onions and celery and cook, stirring, until the veggies are tender, probably 12 minutes or so.

Sprinkle in your herbs and cook for another minute.

Then plop in a whole package (5oz) fresh baby spinach. Toss in the skillet (maybe use a lid) until the leaves are just wilted.

Chuck all that stuff into the bowl with the mushrooms. If you’re making this ahead of time, this is where you stop. Let the stuff cool, cover it, and bung it in the fridge overnight.

When you’re ready to get this on the go, preheat your oven to 350ºF and butter a large casserole dish or 9″ x 13″ baking pan. Whisk 2 eggs and some salt and pepper in a bowl.

Pour in 1 cup low sodium chicken broth (you may need more if you find it dry) and stir that around.

Toss your bread bits with your vegetable mix and pour your broth/egg stuff over top, stirring to make sure it makes it all the way through.

Jam that into your baking dish and bake without covering until it’s brown and crusty on top, about an hour. Let it stand a few minutes before serving (like, take it out when you start to carve up your bird and you’re set).

Egg Wonton Lasagna

I pulled this from the Get Cracking website and it just seemed so weird that I had to try it. Plus I have a million wonton wrappers in my freezer that I bought in anticipation of making more gyoza (which of course I haven’t done).

Egg Wonton Lasagna

First we’re going to roast a few vegetables. Put your oven on the broil setting. Spray a baking sheet with cooking spray and plop on your veggies. I have here 2 red peppers and 3 Italian zucchini (or at least that’s what the sign at Costco called them).

Roast them until the peppers are all charred and black.

Let them cool for a bit, then peel the skins off the red peppers.

Then we’re going to boil ourselves some eggs. In a medium saucepan, cover 6 eggs with water and bring it to a boil.

When it’s boiling, remove the pot from the heat, cover it with a lid, and leave that to stand for 20 minutes. This is a different way to produce hard-boiled eggs than I’m used to, but I figure that the Egg Farmers of Canada know what they’re talking about.

Drain the eggs, run cold water over them to cool them off, then peel and slice them.

I liked how the cold water looked so much I took two more pictures of it.

While the eggs are doing their thing, finely chop 1 small onion and add it to another saucepan with a drop of olive oil and 2 cloves minced garlic (or 2 teaspoons minced garlic from a jar). Sauté until everything is soft and squidgy.

Chuck in a package of baby spinach and stir that around until it’s all wilted.

Pour in a jar/can of pasta sauce and bring that puppy to a boil, then remove it from the heat.

Preheat your oven to 350°F. Get all your ingredients ready to go.

While you’re at it, chop up those roasted vegetables of your’n.

Find yourself an 8″ baking dish (or thereabouts) and ladle about a 1/2 cup of the sauce into the dish. Line the bottom with some of your wonton wrappers, making sure to overlap them a little bit.

Spread that with some more of the sauce you have left, then some of your eggs.

Plop on a some of your chopped vegetables, then some grated mozzarella cheese (I’m not going to limit you on your cheese — we all have our preferences/weaknesses).

Do another layer of wontons, sauce, eggs, vegetables, and cheese.

When you are out of vegetables and eggs you should still have some sauce, cheese, and wontons left.

Any remaining wonton wrappers you’ve got, spread them over the top, then the rest of your sauce, and then some more cheese. Bake in your 350°F oven for 30 minutes, until you can see the sauce at the centre of the dish bubbling up through the top. Let it stand for a few minutes before you cut it, just so the rowdiness can calm down. Serves SIX.

Hash Wednesday

The title for this recipe comes from the Pie, who is a very punny guy. Yeah. Ha ha.

The recipe itself started to come out of Martha Stewart, but then we changed it so I think we’ll call it our own.

Cube up 2 large potatoes (we used PEI Russets) and boil the crap out of them for about 15 minutes.

You have two options here when it comes to the chicken. You can either take a chicken breast with the bone in and the skin on and bake it for 35 minutes at 450°F, or you can take a boneless, skinless chicken breast, cut it in half horizontally, and fry it up in about 15 minutes. Either way, sprinkle some thyme, salt, and pepper on the chicken as it cooks.

However, you do it, cut the resulting cooked chicken into cubes and set aside.

Heat some olive oil in a skillet (use the one you fried your chicken in, if you did that), and sauté half a large onion, diced, until tender. Use a wooden spoon.

Add a teaspoon of garlic in a jar and heat for 30 seconds.

Add your potatoes and cook, stirring often, until browned (about 7 minutes). At this point, add in 2 tablespoons water. Scrape the bottom of the pan with the spoon to bring up all the good stuff that’s starting to stick and keep cooking those potatoes for another 5 minutes or so.

Add in your cubed chicken, together with about 1/4lb baby spinach (I’d say about 5 loosely packed cups). Stir it up until it’s all wilted, about 2 minutes.

Season to taste with salt, pepper, and lemon juice. Serves two.

Tabouleh tabouleh tabouleh

I really like the word tabouleh. I remember eating it often as a kid. It’s a good quick salad and it works well in a pita sandwich.

We made this recipe with couscous, but you can substitute it for quinoa or bulgur or other grains.

Expanding Couscous — Stir the couscous and oil into the water and allow to expand for 2 minutes.

To prepare the couscous, bring a cup of salted water to a boil in a small pot. Remove from the heat and pour in a cup of couscous. Add in 1 tablespoon of olive oil, stir, and allow the pasta to expand for two minutes.

Return the couscous to a low heat on the stove. Drop in 2 to 3 teaspoons of butter and stir until well-blended. Allow to cool.

Adding Butter — Add butter to couscous and stir on low heat until melted.

We got this tabouleh recipe from the Joy of Cooking (2006 edition) by Rombauer & Becker, and we replaced the bulgur with couscous, of course, and we weren’t all that good at measuring, either, so we fiddled with the amounts.

Finely chop 2 to 3 tomatoes, 2 cups of fresh parsley, 1 cup of fresh mint, and 1 bunch of scallions or green onions. See my tips and tricks entry on how to finely chop herbs.

In a small bowl or measuring cup, emulsify 1/3 cup olive oil with 1/3 cup lemon juice. To do this, I took a very small whisk and rubbed it between my palms until the liquid was creamy and custard coloured.