spinach puffs

remember my lament last month about being so sick of the all-i-eat-for-breakfast-overnight-oats. not to bad mouth the oats, they’re really tasty and so easy to make. but man, it gets old after a few months. even after seeping your almond milk in lavender or adding nuts on top, there’s only so much you can change.

i first made these last month as an attempt to mix up my breakfast routine and it worked out great! it requires more prep than the oats, but it can all be done in one foul swoop on a sunday night. three of these constitutes breakfast but i prefer to round it out with two plus a piece of fruit.

what we’re essentially making is mini easy spanikopita. it’s not quite the same as the spinach mix inside buttery sheets of filo dough but it also doesn’t make you want to tear your hair out and it’s a lot healthier in that it doesn’t call for a stick of butter (or two).

spinach puffsmakes 12

1 medium yellow onion
1 pound spinach
3 eggs
1/2 cup feta cheese
1/4 teaspoon pepper
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 package (or two sheets) puff pastry
1/4 cup parmesan cheese (optional)

dice onion and place in an oiled medium-size saucepan over medium heat. cook until onions are translucent, about 10 minutes. add spinach, a hand full at a time, and cook until juice begins to release from spinach. set aside to cool.

while cooling, cut the pastry sheets into squares and place them so they sit as crust in your lined cupcake tin.

when cooled, squeeze as much juice as you can out of the spinach onion mixture and place in a mixing bowl. (you can do this with your hands or preferably with a cheesecloth.)

add feta, salt, pepper, and eggs and mix well. scoop into the puff pastry and top with parmesan cheese (optional).

(you will have extra puff pastry. i bake these in the cupcake tin weighed down with beans for a shell to eat ice cream or berries.)

bake at 350 for 25 minutes. cool on cooling rack at least 5 minutes before eating.

these are good warm as appetizers or cold while running to the bus in the morning.

lemon garlic salmon

happy anniversary of the postal strike of 1973! (you thought i was going to say happy st. patrick’s day, didn’t you?) while i do enjoy the holidays that allow me to have a few days off of work, the only holiday i really celebrate is halloween. i have a dress up box, how could any other holiday be my favorite? i do my best to ignore the rest.

holiday time on the food blogs drives me crazy. i can see the use of thanksgiving recipes and christmas cookie postings since those are some pretty food-centric holidays, but really, why is it necessary to make everything pink in february, and then green in march? soon we’ll see a million ways to make bunny or egg themed food followed by a week of margaritas for cinco de mayo, a highly misunderstood holiday but an easy excuse to get drunk and eat mexican food. are there really so many people having holiday themed parties for their friends that this stuff is necessary? and why the hell are we not making mlk’s favorite dishes for mlk day and russian food on international women’s day to commemorate the holiday started by russian women? well.. i supposed that may be my mission in the future.. to give you recipes for all my favorite non-commercialized holidays. stay tuned for may day. i can’t think of anything other than deep dish pizza and chicago dogs to celebrate the holiday started in haymarket square.

so on this st. patricks day i give you something not green at all. but it is good food appropriate for dinner tonight or any night (unlike green food coloring). this lemon garlic salmon is my version of comfort food. it is a go-to recipe for any frozen fish since it keeps it moist and juicy but it is my favorite for any fish since it’s what i grew up eating at least once a week. (yes, be jealous you didn’t grow up with the regular seafood consumption of an alaskan. although, you probably didn’t get tricked into trying octopus soup by your parents either.)

before i get into the recipe, i want to quickly alert you to the fact that not all salmon are created equal. i’m sure they’re all nice, but if you care about quality you will get coho (silver), chinook (king), or sockeye (red) salmon. marketers try to fool you to buy salmon with names like “keta” but to alaskans you’re eating dog or chum salmon (not appetizing, huh?). same goes for the “pink” salmon the stores are hawking but we call them humpies and when my parents were fishing they were used as bait or thrown back. not a suitable meal—in this case there is a reason for the price difference.

so here is one of my favorite recipes. add a slice of buttered bread and a vegetable and you will have one of the best (and most simple to make) meals of your life.

lemon garlic salmon
serves 2

1/4 cup butter
3 cloves garlic
1 pound salmon
1/8 cup mayonnaise
1 lemon
1/4 teaspoon pepper
1/4 teaspoon salt

divide the butter into small chunks and place in the bottom of a 8×8 inch baking pan. run the garlic through a garlic press and scatter in the bottom of the baking pan with the butter. place the salmon on top of the butter and garlic (cut into pieces as necessary to make it fit).

juice half the lemon into the mayonnaise and stir in salt and pepper. spread a thin coat of mayonnaise mixture onto the salmon. cut the remaining lemon into thin slices and place on top of the salmon. cover dish with foil.

bake at 350 degrees for a suggested 12-15 minutes.*

*i ended up baking mine at 350 for 15 minutes and then another 5 minutes at 400. this is probably because i prepared the dish ahead of time and put the whole thing in the fridge. regardless, the important thing here is to check often and stop baking as soon as the fish flakes in the center. there is nothing better than well cooked fish and nothing worse than overcooked fish.

cranberry walnut sourdough rolls

for the first three months of my job, that i still consider new but really isn’t any more, i have been eating overnight oats. they’re delicious, versatile, and cheap, not to mention the convenience of grabbing a jar out of the fridge in the morning, but it gets old after three months. this month i threw some new breakfast items into my routine that met the delicious and grabable criteria. it requires a bit more advance preparation but the variety is worth it.

last week i made spinach puffs that are essentially mini spanikopita bites without the hours of peeling filo dough and brushing butter. thank you, puff pastry. unfortunately, i forgot to take pictures of the final result, but don’t fret! i’ll be making them again soon.

this week breakfast is hard boiled eggs, fruit, cheese, and deliciously healthy rolls. i got the inspiration for these rolls from the portland chain of grocery stores, new seasons, that have a bakery that makes me not to want to bake my own bread. that takes a lot. but convenience has a price tag and i’m not willing to pay 12 bucks for the amount of rolls i could make myself for 6 bucks.

in order to make these a bit healthier so i wouldn’t just be munching on a chunk of bread i added some flax seeds, pumpkin seeds, and used whole wheat flour. the result was that i had to restrain myself from eating all of my breakfast for the week in one day. goodbye, oatmeal! (see you next week.)

cranberry walnut sourdough rolls
makes 10 to 12 rolls

1 package yeast
1 tablespoon sugar
1 cup water at 105 to 110 degrees
1 cup sourdough starter
3 to 3 1/2 cups whole wheat flour
1 cup walnuts
1/2 cup cranberries
1/4 cup pumpkin seeds
1/8 cup flax seeds

stir together yeast and sugar and add the warm water. (i included the degree range you should aim for because i have found it is key for the bread to rise. relying on warm tap water resulted in many a loaf of sad bread and since sticking to the 110 degree rule i have not had a botched batch!)

once the yeast has a good layer of foam (i let the yeast rise in a measuring cup and wait until there is about a half an inch of foam) add it to the sourdough starter.

stir in 2 cups of flour. add the pumpkin seeds, flax seeds, and cranberries. add another cup of flour and stir in as much as you can with the spoon. knead in the rest of that flour and knead in an extra half cup of flour if necessary. knead for about 5 minutes. the dough should be smooth and elastic when you’re done.

cover with a kitchen towel and let rise for 45 minutes.

plop the dough onto a cutting board and lightly knead for a minute. cut into 10 or 12 pieces (you could do 6 or 8 if you want sandwich rolls)  and knead them into  flat-ish rectangle-ish shapes (what i’m trying to say is you don’t need perfect roll shapes) and place on an oiled or buttered sheet pan. cover with your kitchen towel and let rise for 30 minutes.

place in a pre-heated 400 degree oven for 25 minutes. the rolls should sound hollow when tapped on the bottom.

melted tortilla soup

i love tortilla soup. love it. just writing this post makes me want to abandon this task to go eat leftovers, but i will strive to finish this so you can share in my love.

speaking of love, valentines day is driving me a bit crazy. not in the expected sense of being frustrated by all the candy and hearts everywhere. i’ve never been one to celebrate or bum out for this holiday. what is driving me crazy are all the unnecessarily pink foods and sweets that are on food blogs right now! come on, those candy “conversation” hearts are disgusting, why would you cover a cake in them? if anything it would make more sense for people to be posting how to make a steak dinner for your lover or something. well.. you will find none of that here.

i digress.. this tortilla soup is great. having worked in the restaurant industry for years i’ve had my fair share of tortilla soup. most of the time, what you get is a vegetable soup with some extra chili powder and because you get to put fried corn strips on top, it’s called tortilla soup. i even worked with one guy who literally made salsa, heated it up, and called it tortilla soup. it was disgusting. (can you tell i’m passionate about my tortilla soup?)

“ricotta,” spinach, and onion stuffed shells

this was my first time making shells and they have already surpassed lasagne in my book of delicious italian food. for lasagne to be good i feel like it takes loads of cheese and sauce and plates with different toppings to layer and, man, those noodles are so hard to get not to stick together and you end up with so many dishes. now don’t get me wrong.. i love lasagne. making shells was just such a wonderfully easy experience that i want to impart this to you.

while at the store getting ingredients for this i originally planned on defying my digestive system incapable of breaking down lactose and making this recipe with real ricotta but it is so expensive! i went ahead and used my mom’s ricotta substitute of tofu and i couldn’t tell the difference. without actually trying, i made this a pretty healthy meal complete with protein and not much fat at all. look at me!