deconstructed spanakopita

I though a lot about this, I am not the type to 'deconstruct' dishes, but I wanted to try.

The resulting spinach puddings are really soft but perfectly set and stable, the feta sauce easy and yummy, and the filo 'crackers' complete the dish perfectly, so you will make an impression with your guests!

Ingredients

For the savory spinach mini puddings:

500 g chopped frozen spinach

Water

100 ml milk

2 tbsp grated parmesan cheese

3 eggs

Salt to taste

Salted butter to grease the ramekins

For the Feta Sauce:

100 g feta

A sprig of oregano (or a pinch of dried oregano)

A little milk and hot water

For the Filo Crackers:

5 sheets of film pastry

Salted butter, melted, to brush

Boil the spinach with water, then drain but do not squeeze. Put the spinach in a bowl and blend with an immersion blender. Add the milk and blend again. Add the parmesan and eggs and blend again. Taste for salt then add salt. Grease 8 ramekins with butter and fill with the spinach mixture, then cover with baking paper and secure with a rubber band. Place in a roasting pan filled with water (only half-way through the ramekins) and bake at 160° C for about one hour.

To make the sauce just brake the feta with a fork and thin down with a little milk and a little hot water until you get a creamy consistency. Do not use a blender but just a fork. Add the oregano and set aside.

To make the filo crackers, place 3 sheets of filo on a baking tray lined with baking paper. Brush with melted salted butter, then add 2 more sheets of filo and brush again. Using a pizza cutter or a knife make some incisions over the pastry to cut it into 8 rectangles, and then each rectangle into 2 triangles. Make sure that the incisions are all the way through the pastry (i.e. the pastry is cut into 16 triangles). Bake with the spinach pudding (on a different rack, of course!) until the top of the filo is golden and crispy.

Remove the puddings from the oven and reverse over the serving plates (they should come out easily, but otherwise just pass the borders with a knife). Add two filo triangles and a spoonful of feta sauce to each plate. Serve immediately as an antipasto. These puddings are soft, moist and creamy and can be eaten with a spoon, or a dessert fork, and are suited to open a formal dinner. My family really liked them, but I guess that they like Spanakopita too!

How to make Rose Turkish Delights (Lokum), and Sweet New Zealand

Rose Turkish Delights (Lokum) Before I start I would like to say that I don't have a sugar thermometer, essential if you are really into confectionery, and that I didn't use much sugar for these Turkish delights. Many recipes use much more sugar, and it is not that I wanted to make a low sugar treat here (it is still pretty sweet), it is just that making it at home really makes me realize how much sugar there is already in my diet, and if I can have something with a little less... well, why not! This method is 'home friendly' i.e. these can be made at home with very little effort and equipment, and the recipe comes from my book Sweet As... where I also have the recipe for lavender and orange blossom Turkish Delights. Ingredients 1 l water 300 g sugar 2 tbsp lemon juice 100 g cornflour 1 tbsp frozen raspberries 1 tbsp rose water icing sugar (very little) and cornflour (lots) to dust. In a pot put hal...

Silver beet Paneer, a variation of Palak Paneer

The other day I showed you my curry made with borage , ‘invented’ because I have tons of it in the garden! The other green-leaf crop that does well in Auckland is silver beet. My old plants (from last year!) got so tall that I started collecting only the little leaves from the stalks, and they look like spinach. One of my favourite Indian dishes is Palak Paneer (or Panir), spinach with panir cottage cheese, and this variation is made using my silver beet. I washed (many times!) the small silver beet leaves, and then I steamed them and drain them. In a heavy pot I heated 2 tbsp of vegetable oil (I used rice bran oil) and sautéed for 30 seconds: 1/2 tsp ground cumin 1/2 tsp ground coriander 1 tsp turmeric 1/3 tsp ground chili then I added 2 roughly chopped shallots and, after 3 minutes, a good pinch of salt and the cooked silver beet. I cooked everything on low for about 20 minutes (you may need to add just a little water if the silver beet is too dry) and then finely pureed the content ...

Home Made Marzipan Sweets

This is another recipe from my book Sweet As , and something that I love to make for Xmas. I would like to say that for marzipan you should get the best almonds around, natural, but here in New Zealand the almonds taste different from the ones in Italy. They are imported, not sure where from most of the time, but they are not top grade almonds. Still, with a few tips, you can make your marzipan taste great even with 'regular' almonds! Buy them natural, not blanched, you need to blanche then yourself or the result will be too dry. To blanch them you need to put them in boiling water for a couple of minutes, and then add cold water and take the skin off, one by one. For this recipe you will need: 200 g almonds 100 g icing sugar 5 apricot kernels. As I was saying before, the almond here have little taste, so I like to collect the stones from apricot and get the almonds out. They are a real pain to crack! In the photo above you can see apricot stones and kernels. The apricot kernel...

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