This dish is very similar to the Moosewood Cookbook's casserole recipe that has similar ingredients, but turning it into a pie creates a different delight. For one thing, the rice crust turns crispy on the side near the pan but is soft and delicious, too, where it meets the spinach filling. Because there are eggs in both the rice crust and the filling, it all slices well and holds together for serving. It is fine as the main dish, but we had some salmon that we'd bought the day before, so Sweetie grilled that and I made the pie.
I was gifted this recipe from an old friend, Ginny, who is also my hairdresser. Her Granny Anne was an excellent cook and this was one of the family favorites...and one of the ones where the amounts were written out at some point. Like many cooks of her generation, Granny Anne was a skilled cook who often just threw things together, not measuring and not writing down a recipe. Ginny learned to cook from Granny Anne...her own mother was apparently a terrible cook!
Granny Anne learned to cook in her late teens from a doctor's wife. It was the time of the Dust Bowl in the mid-West and Granny Anne's family were farmers in South Dakota. They lost their farm and, like many others, moved to California. Anne's father found her employment with a doctor's family. She was a hard worker, but her work up until then had been twelve hour days working the fields, not cooking. That's what she told the doctor's wife, who then asked her if she could read and write. Anne said she could, so the doctor's wife assured her that she could learn to cook...and then proceeded to teach her how! Anne became a fantastic cook and used to cook her extended family huge meals which included jellied salads, green salad, home made dressings, asparagus with hollandaise, broccoli with brown butter, freshly made Parker House rolls, plus a wonderful roast or a dish like this and also grilled chicken. And that's before serving dessert like a wonderful mocha pie. Ginny kept all her recipe books once she had passed and I hope to bring you more of Granny Anne's culinary delights in the future.
Some of the best recipes work by throwing things together...and it's sometimes impossible to go back and figure out all the measurements, ingredients, techniques and so on to recreate the most delectable ones. Glad that this one was a written down recipe, even if I wrote it up with more detail...but posted the original so that you can see how it was written by Granny Anne. Sweetie really, really enjoyed it!
When I realized that I had better get going if this was going to be ready by dinner time, I also discovered that I didn't have time to cook the rice unless we were going to eat an hour late. Fortunately I had microwavable packets of already cooked rice...one of brown rice and one of long grain and wild rice. I heated both packets up, then mixed them together for the rice crust. I know that plain rice would have been fine, but I do think that the added flavor of the brown and wild rices just makes this even more wonderful. I couldn't find a chunk of Swiss cheese at the store, so I bought slices, then cut them thinly and cross cut them for the rice mixture. I had some left over, so I did the same thing and used that to top the spinach mixture before baking. The photo below shows the baked rice and spinach pie.
Granny Anne's Rice and Spinach Pie
8 servings
2/3 cup shredded Swiss cheese
1 egg, well beaten
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup cottage cheese
3 eggs, well beaten
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg (freshly ground if you can)
a few drops hot sauce or 1/8 teaspoon ground cayenne pepper