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!

Milk Calendar Mondays: Chicken and Fresh Spinach Tortellini

Dare I say it?

This is the sort of thing the Milk Calendar people should be aiming for when developing and choosing recipes for their calendar.

You read right. Two passing grade recipes in a row. Who'da thunk it?

When you actually read this month's recipe for Chicken and Fresh Spinach Tortellini, you might easily figure out why it works: the dairy component (in this case milk) serves a real purpose. That is the milk is supposed to be there and substituting it for water or stock or wine would probably make the recipe worse.

Milk wasn't used to boil rice. Milk wasn't used as pasta water.

The milk was used for sauce. And not some wretched, bland and pallid imitation of what should have been a bold and flavourful coating. It was a sauce that worked well enough and easily adapted to the cook's preference.

In keeping with the calendar's raison d'être it is an extremely easy recipe. And in keeping with the other recipes, it is designed so as to not offend Canadian's stereotypically timid tastebuds. The "adventurous" additions really aren't that daring: bitter greens (Swiss chard) and bacon (pancetta)--but I'm a half-bacon-fiend who's more than Swiss chard friendly, I went that route.

I made a couple of changes to the recipe--instead of baby spinach, I used grown up spinach (I'm beginning an antipathy for baby veggies--apart from the price, I'm increasingly unconvinced of their flavour) and my dining companion has a citrus allergy, so I didn't use the lemon rind, but to add the teeniest bit of sharpness used a about a quarter tsp of white wine vinegar.

It was a pretty effortless affair and the recipe came together in a rather quick fashion--I think I had dinner on the table within about -45 minutes, from start of prep to dishing out the pasta. To keep it as a one-pot dish, I crisped the bacon in the cooking pot, removed the pieces, but kept the fat in the pot when whisking the flour into Ahe milk. The flavour was pretty good--it would definitely benefit from a bay leaf and the bacon should be manditory--tried it without and it didn't work for me or my friend...and if you aren't making your own stock and like me used an insta-boullion, you may want to keep the bacon fat in the dish because of the lovely all-over depth it added to the dish.


cheers!
jasmine