Spinach, Mushroom and Tomato Tart

I am horrible at this Facebook thing.

I resisted getting an account for ages--my friends know where I am (and if they don't I'm easily found), and I know where they are; between work, this blog and my Twitter account I spend enough of my life staring into an illuminated screen, tapping madly away at a well-worn keyboard; my innate distrust of social networking sites and the horrid marketers that lurk within.

But I have an account, mostly neglected. Like many other social networking sites I'm on, I can go ages without logging in. Often when I do, it's only to respond to a note or a friend request. Also when I do, I'm amazed at all the names the system suggests I connect with.

Take today for example. As I type, the Unseen Facebook Overlords suggest I should connect with 27 people. Normal, I suppose. The thing is, I only recognise two of them. The rest? I haven't a clue.

I imagine some of them to have some sort of connection to the people I've accepted as friends on the site...I also imagine some of them to be the equivalent of eHarmony matches...you know the highly questionable ones that only seem to be compatable because they match your gender preferences and nothing else...but in Facebookland they show up because they have a profile and you have a profile. When I remove someone from the list because there is no connection whatsoever, they are replaced with someone else...also with whom there is no connection whatsoever.

Bizarre.

But I do check in when I get a note. And it's one of these notes that led to today's recipe. A friend asked if I had a quiche recipe that used spinach, mushrooms and tomatoes--her latest attempt didn't appeal. Hmmm....I had a tomato tart recipe and a spinach quiche recipe, so I took this as an opportunity to play in my kitchen (as if I really need to be prompted to do that) and developed this recipe.

I didn't know whether to call this a quiche or a tart. I see quiches as bits suspended in eggy cream, whereas here eggy cream binds together the spinach and mushrooms. Not wanting the quiche police (I'm sure they exist, with a rule book filled with yolk to cheese ratios) after me, I went the safer route and christened it a tart.

There aren't any real tricks to this recipe, but I will say quickly zapping the cream cheese into an oozy puddle does make easy work of mixing it into the milk and eggs. The tart itself is subtantial, but not heavy and pairs well with a small bowl of soup or a leafy salad.


Spinach, Mushroom and Tomato Tart
Makes one 20cm/8" tart

fat for frying (olive oil, butter, canola, bacon fat)
90g (0.75c) mushrooms, sliced
salt
pepper
1 shallot, minced
1 garlic cloves, minced
300g (10oz) (1 pkg) frozen chopped spinach, thawed and drained
100g (3.5oz) cream cheese, softened
125ml (0.5c) full fat milk
1 Tbsp dijon mustard
a good pinch of dried thyme (0.25-0.5tsp)
2 eggs
1 prebaked pie shell
1-2 tomatoes, thinly sliced

Preheat oven to 200C/400F.

Sauté mushrooms, with pinches of salt and pepper, until soft. Add the shallots and stir until translucent. Add the garlic. When they release their scent, add the spinach and sauté for a few minutes. Take off the hob to cool.

Whisk the softened cream cheese, milk, mustard and eggs together until smooth. Add salt, pepper and thyme and mix well. Stir in the spinach mixture.

Pour into pie shell and top with sliced tomatoes and sprinkle, if you wish, with black pepper. Bake for 25-35 minutes or until the eggs have set.

Cool on a wire rack; serve warm.


cheers!
jasmine

I'm a quill for hire!

I'm no angel

Churning litre upon litre of ice cream had one predictable surprise: abundant quantities of abandoned egg whites.

Abandoned, but not for long.

Unfortunately, as it was at the start of my month-o-phlegmy-grossness, my culinary fantasies of macarons, marshmallows and coconut macaroons-on-their-ways-to-becoming-home-made-Bounty-bars were not to be. I was (and still am) tired, and not yearning to be creative or daring or even interesting. I also didn't want to bin (or shall I say pour out) the egg whites...that would be wasteful.

I was looking for maximum bang for my cluck with relatively minimal effort. Yes, I could make a week or two's worth of egg white omelettes and play with the fillings and flavourings, but...meh...I just wanted to be done and over with as many as possible, as quickly as possible. I suppose their viscosity too closely resembled...well...you know.

Yeah, nothing like thinking an ingredient reminds you of snot to make you want to get rid of it in an appropriate way...not that I'd consider using real snot as an ingredient...maybe when I was two-year old, but not now that I'm a multiple of...two. So, in this case, an appropriate way does not include tissues or zippy white pills that add a bit of pep to my step...it involves baking.

I must admit that it's been a long time since I last had angel food cake. A really long time. So long ago that I'd forgotten how...ummm...unmemorable these cakes are...when served on their own.

But I suppose their versatility makes angel food cakes popular. They really don't need to be iced or frosted or dusted. A cake with a bright white and tender crumb is a lovely thing, but well...it needs something--fruit (either fresh or in a coulis) or even a few moments on a hot grill. Heck, these cakes are really very marshmallowy like. A thick slice, grilled then served with a raspberry coulis or lemon curd would go very nicely.

Admittedly, I'd lost my va-voom a few days after I made the cake, so I wound up having it with warmed caramel or hot fudge sauce...which may have been a bit of a boo-boo...you try snoozing off a cold when totally loaded on sugar-covered sugar.


Angel Food Cake
adapted from Spiced Angel Food Cake, found in Alton Brown's I'm Just Here For More Food, p270-271.

13 egg whites
75ml water
1.5 tsp cream of tartar
390g sugar
0.25 tsp salt
125g cake flour
splash orange extract

Preheat oven to 180C/350F.

Whip together egg whites, water , orange extract and cream of tartar until white and foamy. Add sugar and beat to medium peaks.

Sift remaining dry ingredients together. Gently fold the flour mixture into the marshmallowy mixture, about one-quarter to one-third at a time, until all the dry ingredients are fully incorporated.

Spoon the batter into an ungreased 4.5 L tube pan, being careful to not deflate the mixture. Bake for 30-40 minutes or until a cake tester comes out clean.

Cool for at least an hour in the pan before turning out.




cheers!
jasmine

Is that a zucchini in your pocket...

...or are you just happy to eat with me?

The other week I mentioned a home-grown, pesticide-free courgette, courtesy of a colleague. Notice the singular? It wasn't a couple of squash it was one. See the spoon in the photo? That's a teaspoon. The veg in question was a 1.13kg (roughly 2.5 lb) beauty. Yup, it was a biggie.

A couple of chocolate loaves later and I was still up to my knees in zucchini (remember I am almost 5'1"). If the weather were cooler, they'be be roasted in some ratatouille and if I had a barbecue, I'd have grilled off some slices for a warm salad. But it was too warm for the oven and I don't have a barbecue. So I did the next best thing...I fritterised them.

Let's face it, there are worse things that could happen to a veg...I mean, they could be boiled to within an inch of their lives: any and all vestiges of flavour and inherant goodness they once contained are dissipated in a cafeteria worker's cooking pot.

Or they could be dehydrated and pulverised, mixed with a load of salt, polysyllabic preservatives and colourants to justify the "made with real vegetables"-type monicker on certain foods.

Fritters are incredibly easy--mix veggies into a batter and drop by the spoonful into a pan with about two to five centimetres of hot fat. Let the underside burnish and then flip over and fry the other side. Lift out of the fat (salt if you wish) and drain onto kitchen towels. Then eat while warm.

Curried Courgette Fritters
75g plain flour
1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
salt
pepper
1 tsp curry powder (or more or less, depending upon taste)
1 egg, beaten
450g courgettes, grated and drained of excess liquid
1 medium onion, grated and drained of excess liquid
oil, for frying

Heat the oil until it shimmers.

In the meantime, sift together all the dry ingredients, stir in the egg and fold in the grated courgettes and onion.

Drop by teaspoonful into the fat-flatten each drop out a bit so the centres will cook through. Don't crowd the pan otherwise the oil's temp will drop and then soak into the fritters, making the greasy and leaden. When the underside is burnished, turn over the fritter and fry until it too is a lovely golden brown. Remove from the oil and blot on kitchen towelling.



Normally when I have fritters I eat them plain or with ketchup or barbeque sauce. With this batch I decided to pair them with a very garlicky home-made aïoli. It was good in theory...and eventually in practise. My first batch of fritters, while practically perfect, were paired with a very imperfect garlicky dipping sauce. It just didn't come together: it was lumpy and bumpy and separated far too quickly.

So I tried it again, about a week later, with a new batch of fritters (from yet another mutant zucchini). This time, I wasn't in the best moods when I made the fritters and well...you could tell. The fritters were thin and scraggley and seemed to take forever to cook regardless of how warm the oil got. I lost several because they absorbed so much oil, their edibility was in question.

The aïoli, on the other hand, turned out beautifully--thick and unctious and very, very garlickly. It's quite easy to make--it's quite similar to making mayonnaise. You can make it by hand with a whisk or with a blender (stick or jug versions).

Garlic aïoli
4 garlic cloves, minced
1 egg yolk
125 ml olive oil
125 ml canola oil (or other flavourless oil
salt
pepper
1 dspn mashed potatoes

Whisk together the yolk and the garlic. Drizzle in the oils while constantly whisking, to thicken the sauce. Whisk in the mashed potatoes. Season with salt and pepper to taste.


cheers!
jasmine