Main: Spinach Pie (or Spanakopita) with Roast Pumpkin & Beetroot Salad
Pie – my own recipe & salad from Women’s Weekly Cooking for Friends Pg. 111
Dessert: Apple Bavarois with Burnt Honey Syrup
Sunday Magazine
Hi Everyone, hope you have had a happy week trying out some new recipes.
This week we have gone vegetarian much to the displeasure of the MAV. Seriously… who doesn’t like a good spinach pie?? Yes, yes, I know it can at times be a little bland and the meat lovers in your house may not appreciate it, but hey why not live on the wild side and give it a go. Anyway this recipe is an adaptation of my own and is one of those things you can throw together at the last minute having prepared the filling earlier. A couple of key things here – you must drain (or squash) all the liquid from the spinach once steamed otherwise you will send the pastry soggy.
That is also why it is best not to assemble the pie until cooking time. The combination of three different types of cheese along with silverbeet and baby spinach makes for a really savoury pie. With regard to the tub of cottage cheese, I use the chive and onion flavour and that also gives it a boost. I was looking forward to trying the salad of pumpkin and beetroot because they are two of my favourite things and it didn’t disappoint. However, the beetroot is baked and not pickled and it is a very earthy flavour. If this isn’t your sort of thing, I would replace the fresh beetroot with a tin of whole baby beets. These will work beautifully and will be a little sweeter in flavour. The tangy dressing of greek yoghurt, lime and ginger was simple and fresh. This is a dressing you could use of any number of things from fish to chicken as well as salad. The pie received 10/10 and the salad a 9/10.
And sooooo, onto dessert. Well, my own fault. Yes, I have tried recipes from the paper before and had marginally good results but this was a bit of a flop. (I really need to stick to WW or delicious). The apple bavarois is described as “This creamy apple bavarois if just a combination of three simple elements – custard, apple purée and cream. Nothing more to it.” Well, sorry but there is more to it. For a start, the flavour is greatly lacking and secondly, the sauce of honey simmered with cloves just doesn’t work, plus the smell turned me off. Let’s face it, when cooking and then eating we are using not just taste but smell to begin with and the smell of the sauce just left me disinterested in even eating the dessert. To me, what it needed was a good caramel sauce and a dollop of cream. As usual I have included the original recipe but please take note of what I have said and maybe use a different sauce and I would put half a teaspoon of vanilla in the custard. If you make the sauce too far in advance it does set like concrete but you can warm it through and melt it again. However, this is not mentioned in the recipe itself. Why don’t they give us these tips? It is so frustrating and I guess that is why I keep coming back on the whole to the good old Women’s Weekly. This dessert received a miserable 2/10 for effort.
Until next week,
From my table to yours with love.
