Fan Favorite Oldie But Goodie

The photos don't do this dish justice...at all. Trust me when I say that this recipe will become one of your favorites, just like it's a favorite of others stopping by this blog.

I first posted about this casserole in the spring of 2009. A lot of life has happened since then, but the recipe has been a continually searched one over the years. I first made it even longer ago than 2009, maybe even before my kids were born. It's from a delightful and unusual cookbook called the Moosewood Cookbook by Mollie Katzen. Unusual because the recipes were written by hand and the illustrations were done by hand...no photographs, no type to speak of, just warm and welcoming recipes with lots of them vegetarian, many of them celebrating cultures other than U.S.A. cultures, and ones that became favorites, like this one. Delightful because you will likely keep finding another recipe you want to try as you make your way through the book. It was first published in 1977. If you don't find it at Powell's Books (a Portland, Oregon bookstore that has a lot of used books of all kinds), then check Amazon or your local library, used book store, etc. It's a great cookbook to have on your shelf.

This recipe, Spinach-Rice Casserole, has brown rice with it's nutty flavor, spinach, cheddar cheese, eggs and milk, and some seasonings. Don't skip the sunflower seeds on top...they not only taste great and add texture, but their fragrance mingles with the other ingredients to make your kitchen smell cozy and welcoming. Perhaps the best part is that you will likely have leftovers...and they are even better than the first night. I just returned from four days in Phoenix, visiting family, and Sweetie ate leftover Spinach-Rice Casserole the first two nights I was gone. I think he would have eaten it the next two nights, but it was all gone.

Cook the brown rice first because brown rice takes a little longer than white rice. While it's cooking you chop the onion and mince the garlic and grate the cheese. I use frozen spinach that is already chopped...it just needs thawing and then squeezing the thawed spinach to get out the excess liquid. Eggs get whisked, milk added, and parsley chopped. Then you sauté the onion and garlic, add almost all of the rest of the ingredients and stir them together, add the rice and combine everything so that it can be turned out into a buttered casserole dish. After a sprinkle of both sunflower seeds and paprika, the casserole gets covered, baked, uncovered, baked some more, than cooled just enough that it doesn't burn your mouth. Feast on a soft and gloriously flavored casserole with a bit of crunch from the sunflowers. You'll be glad you took the time to bake this dish. So will friends and/or family because this make a good sized casserole (about 9 x 13-inches) that can feed quite a few lucky folks.

Spinach-Rice Casserole, based on a recipe from Moosewood Cookbook by Mollie Katzen, 1977

2 cloves minced garlic
1 medium yellow onion, peeled and chopped
1/2 teaspoon salt (More, to taste)
3 tablespoons butter (I used 2 tablespoons olive oil)
2 lbs. raw, chopped spinach or, as I did, use 1 package frozen, chopped spinach, thawed
4 cups cooked brown rice
4 beaten eggs 
1 cup milk
1 1/2 cups grated cheddar
1/4 cup chopped parsley
2 tablespoons tamari (optional)
a few dashes each - nutmeg, cayenne
1/4 cup sunflower seeds
paprika

Saute' onions and garlic with the salt in butter (or oil). When onions are soft, add spinach. Cook 2 minutes. (Alternately, thaw and drain a 10 oz box frozen chopped spinach. Add to onion mixture, but don't cook any further.)
Combine the onion mixture with the brown rice, eggs, milk, cheese, parsley, tamari, nutmeg, cayenne. Spread into buttered casserole and sprinkle sunflower seeds and then paprika on top.
Bake, covered, 25 minutes at 350 degrees F. Uncover and bake 10 more minutes.

Serves 4 - 6

Cheese

Nope, I'm not going to take your picture. I just want to rave about one of my favorite foods, cheese.

When I was pregnant with my son, who was born 30 years ago this coming Sunday, I found out that I was lactose intolerant. Any kind of dairy would leave me with bloating and gas and feeling very uncomfortable. It became a sort of game to find the dairy products in foods...you would be amazed where one finds things like whey and casein. As it turned out, Max was the one with the lactose intolerance, not me, so I kept off of dairy products until I finished nursing him.

The dairy product I missed most was cheese. I love the bite of a good sharp cheddar, the creamy texture of a ripe brie, the savory tang of good blue cheese, how Parmesan seems to make anything better, and how the mellow nuttiness of Swiss is good at enhancing all sorts of ingredients. Feta cheese is wonderful in salads and by itself for a snack. I love all of them and many more.

Today I splurged a little and had a toasted cheddar cheese (Dubliner) sandwich with fresh from the garden tomatoes and basil. The cheese melted, the tomatoes heated up which intensified their wonderful summery flavor and the basil added its unique fragrance and flavor. This kind of sandwich is one of the pleasures of summer time. The bread was a nice 7-grain loaf with some crunch once grilled a bit. With a handful of ripe Bing cherries and a cup of Irish Breakfast tea I was a happy woman.

Do you have a favorite cheese or favorite recipe using cheese? If you send me a photo (to plachman at sonic dot net) I'll post it here.

In the meantime I'll share a photo I took of a white lily that is sending its heady fragrance into the kitchen from the windowsill. I still have a few lilies that haven't opened. Lilies are one of the pleasures of the season, too.

Comfy

When I was madly hustling to move the office and convert it to a guest room last month I longed for some down time to just be lazy. Careful what you wish for, right? With a tickle cough and frequent need for tissue to blow my nose it is all too easy to rue the hours I'm spending in bed. I do get to read a lot (when I'm not sleeping...this cold seems to require a lot of sleeping) but even that gets boring. Even oceans of hot tea is not a comfort. At lunchtime I decided it was time for true comfort food that was also quick and easy...a great combination.

A while back one of the favored party dishes was call Seven Layer Dip, a quasi-Mexican plateful of layers of refried beans, cheese, guacamole, olives, tomatoes, sour cream and tortilla chips. This is my variation on that dish, scaled down to a personal portion. If you have the ingredients, a microwave and about 10 minutes, you have a warm, gooey, savory, salty, crispy, tangy plate of deliciousness before you know it.

Start with a microwave safe plate. Add about 1/2 cup refried beans, spread out in the middle of the plate. I use non-fat traditional but there are lots of varieties to choose from. ( I happened to have in the fridge some ground turkey which had been cooked with some chopped onion, so I heated that up and added it, but usually I just go with the beans.) Top the plate with some waxed paper and microwave on half power about a minute to heat the beans.

While the beans are heating, cut an avocado in half and peel the part without the pit, then roughly dice it. The second half can be stored for another use and keeping the pit in helps it keep from going bad.

Once the beans are hot, remove the waxed paper and sprinkle on a handful of grated sharp cheddar cheese. Replace the waxed paper and microwave until the cheese is just melted, about 1 minute at half power.

While the cheese is melting, remove the stem end from a small to medium tomato and dice roughly, then add to the avocado, tossing gently to combine. If you have it you can sprinkle this topping with some lime juice.

Once the cheese has melted, remove the waxed paper and discard it. Top the beans and cheese with the avocado/tomato topping.

Spoon dabs of yogurt (I like Greek style) or sour cream around the dish and sprinkle on a bit of cayenne pepper...a lot if you like spicy heat, a dash if you are more timid like me.

That's it! Scoop up the warm/cool mixture with crunchy salty corn tortilla chips and enjoy your easy, comforting snack or lunch. That's what I did. I don't think I can credit this dish - it's probably helped by the nap I just woke up from - but I'm feeling better.

Somthing New for Arcadia

It’s easy to get into a rut.

Many Fridays I eat lunch with my friend Arcadia at a place that has wonderful stir frys over brown rice.

Last Friday was rainy and cool and the kind of day where it’s nice to stay home and have soup. In an effort to break out of our rut, and so she could see how my garden was shaping up, Arcadia came over for lunch. I made chicken soup and a nice green salad. It seemed like we needed one more thing, so I mixed together some cheese biscuits. Arcadia was quite taken with them and said that they were unlike any biscuits she had ever tasted…perhaps something new under the sun.

That morning I had opened my shipment from King Arthur Flour. I’d received a gift certificate and was like a kid in a candy shop when I went through the catalog and then online. So many wonderful things! One of the items that I had to have was their Harvest Grains Blend, an interesting mix of whole oat berries, millet, rye flakes and wheat flakes, plus flax, poppy, sesame and sunflower seeds. I added a quarter of a cup to the biscuits and it made such a difference!

The grains added depth of flavor and the seeds contributed more flavors and crunch. If you don’t have the blend, you could substitute two tablespoons of rolled oats, and some seeds you might have on hand, such as poppy, sesame, sunflower and/or pumpkin…about another 2 tablespoons if you have that.

The ‘surprise’ here isn’t the savory and delightful cheese, nor the seeds and flakes because you can see those in the finished biscuits. The ingredient that pulls it all together and gives it snap is cayenne pepper…just enough to lend a nice warmth. Without it the biscuits might seem too sweet.

Do try these with soup or green salad or even chili or chicken salad. I used packaged biscuit mix, but if you don’t want to do that, use your favorite biscuit recipe and then add the cheese, cayenne and seeds/grain flakes.

These were so popular that only one was left for the photo!

Spicy Seedy Cheesy Biscuits – or Something New Under the Sun Biscuits
Makes about 8 biscuits

1 ½ cups Bisquick Heart Smart mix or similar biscuit mix
1 cup finely shredded cheddar cheese
¼ cup King Arthur Harvest Grains Blend or substitution as suggested above
½ teaspoon cayenne pepper
½ cup plus 1 tablespoon fat-free milk ( I used reconstituted fat free condensed milk)

Preheat oven to 450 degrees F. In a bowl, stir all the dry ingredients together. Make a well in the center and add the milk. Stir just until combined and soft dough forms. Turn out onto lightly floured surface and knead 10 times.

Roll dough ½ inch thick. Cut with a 2 inch cutter dipped in flour. Place on ungreased cookie sheet or silicon mat.

Bake 7 – 9 minutes or until golden brown. Watch carefully the last minute so that they don’t burn.

Serve hot.

Egg Scramble

Sometimes simple ingredients are all you need for a satisfying eating experience. Scramble a few eggs together with some fresh spinach and a little shredded cheddar cheese and you have a plate of simple deliciousness. The mellowness of the eggs gets a kick from the spinach and the cheddar gets nice and melty. Dig in! You could also use Swiss chard instead of the spinach.

Spinach Scramble
Serves 2

4 eggs
1/2 cup shredded cheddar cheese
1 cup chopped fresh spinach
1 teaspoon butter
salt and pepper to taste

Heat a small cast iron skillet or saute' pan over high heat. If you are using a non-stick pan you might be able to skip the butter.

Crack the eggs into a medium bowl, then lightly beat the eggs with a fork. Put the butter into the pan to melt and heat a bit. Pour in the eggs, add the cheddar cheese and give the mixture a stir. Add the spinach and stir it in. Let sit for a few seconds, then stir again. Grind on some pepper and stir again. When eggs are cooked as firmly as you like, scoop onto two plates and sprinkle lightly with salt (if you want salt). All of this will take a very short time. Don't overcook the eggs.

Serve hot.

Oldie But Goodie Casserole

It is very interesting that newspapers and magazines are flooded with tips on ways to get through these tough economic times. I guess no one in the media knew a year ago that there were plenty of people going through economic hard times...it took the loss of income by upper middle class folks when the stock market took a dive to alert them.

The good news is that I've been there, done that, and have the scars to prove it. The mid '70s were difficult ones for me. I was laid off at a retail store...not enough sales...sound familiar? I did temp work, odd jobs, street vendor sales at Christmas, sewed my own Christmas gifts by hand because the sewing machine was broken and there was no spare money to fix it. When I went to the grocery store I added up each item in my shopping cart and returned the least needed items to the shelves until I had the amount of groceries that I could pay for with the cash in my pocket. I was young and had no expectation that I should be living a cushy life yet, so it really wasn't bad, but you do learn how to be frugal while having fun.
In ancient times, right around 1978, since we were experiencing a similar shortage of cash as many folks today, we turned to recipes that were less expensive to cook. The cookbook Moosewood Cookbook by the lovely and artistic Mollie Katzen had just been published and going vegetarian was one way of eating more healthfully and frugally at the same time. Her illustrations were wonderful. Everything was done by hand, then turned into a book. How appropriate.

One of my favorite recipes from the book can be made even healthier these days by using low fat cheese and egg substitute, although that costs a little more than with plain eggs and regular cheese. You could cut the amount of cheese, too . Even though fresh spinach is delightful, there was a sale the other day on frozen spinach, so I used that for this recipe. It needed to be defrosted and drained, but was then perfect for this dish.

I cooked the brown rice about an hour before I put the casserole together. You can also use leftover rice. The brown rice has lots of nutrients and I like the chewiness it gives this dish.

You can use this as a side dish, a main dish if you have a big salad on the side, or even for brunch. If you added some crumbled bacon or turkey bacon or veggie bacon bits to it, it is super brunch food.

Hope that you are experiencing enough prosperity that you can make this dish just because it appeals to you!

Spinach-Rice Casserolebased on a recipe from Moosewood Cookbook by Mollie Katzen, 1977

2 cloves minced garlic
1 medium yellow onion, peeled and chopped
1/2 teaspoon salt (More, to taste)
3 tablespoons butter (I used 2 tablespoons olive oil)
2 lbs. raw, chopped spinach
4 cups cooked brown rice
4 beaten eggs (I used the equivalent amount of egg substitute)
1 cup milk
1 1/2 cups grated cheddar
1/4 cup chopped parsley
2 tablespoons tamari (optional)
a few dashes each - nutmeg, cayenne
1/4 cup sunflower seeds
paprika

Saute' onions and garlic with the salt in butter (or oil). When onions are soft, add spinach. Cook 2 minutes. (Alternately, thaw and drain a 10 oz box frozen chopped spinach. Add to onion mixture, but don't cook any further.)
Combine the onion mixture with the brown rice, eggs, milk, cheese, parsley, tamari, nutmeg, cayenne. Spread into buttered casserole and sprinkle sunflower seeds, paprika on top.
Bake, covered, 25 minutes at 350 degrees F. Uncover and bake 10 more minutes.

Serves 4 - 6

Goes Well with Soup

Yesterday I posted a recipe for some great Potato and Spinach Soup. This bread, full of the brawny flavors of ale, cheddar and rye, goes really well with soup. The crust has some crunch, the interior is soft and with pockets of holes, some left by melting cheddar. As you can see by the photo of the shaped boule, it is loaded with cheddar shreds.

It probably makes good toast, too, but Sweetie and I just ate it warm and as is...no butter needed.

A huge thank you goes to Jackie for this recipe which comes from Jackie's blog: Toxo Bread. She modified it from Tomi's recipe Brown Interior's Ale Bread recipe, which was in turn adapted from Richard Bertinet's Crust. Since the measurement were given in grams and I'm not fluent in metrics, I may have changed the recipe more than I know when I converted it to cups. The addition of rye was my own idea, too. Some thing about cheddar, rye and ale seemed right and it did turn out a great pair of loaves of bread.

I made two round loaves, better known as boules. That gave maximum crust territory and I love a good crust! Going to send this over to Susan at Wild Yeast for the Yeastspotting roundup this week. If you love bread, it is a great place to go for new ideas.

Ale and Cheddar Bread
adapted from Jackie's recipe at Toxo Bread

Poolish
1 cup ale (or any beer you’d just as well drink)
1 cup bread flour
1/4 tsp instant yeast (or 1 cup sourdough starter)

Final dough
all of the poolish
2 cups bread flour
½ cup dark rye flour
1 cup whole wheat flour
1 cup Vermont sharp cheddar, shredded
1/4 tsp instant yeast
½ cup water, lukewarm
1 teaspoon salt

Directions
Mixing the poolish

Combine all of the poolish ingredients, cover and let ferment for 3 to 5 hours, until risen and bubbly.

Mixing the dough
Mix all of the final dough ingredients except for the salt. Knead for 10 minutes by hand until supple. Add salt and cheese, and knead until they’re fully incorporated, another 3 to 5 minutes.

Bulk ferment
In an oiled bowl for two hours, with one stretch and fold at the one hour point.

Shaping and proofing
Shape according to your heart’s desire - I divided the dough into two portions, and made two boules. Proof for one hour. I proofed them on a baking sheet on top of a silicone mat, covered with a linen dish towel.

Baking
After proofing, I slashed each boule in a cross shape, and placed the baking sheet into a preheated 450 degree F. oven and baked it about ½ hour, until deep golden brown. If you turn the boule over and tap on the bottom, it should make a hollow sound. Cool before serving.

Until We Meet Again

Who knew that getting ready to have a house tented to treat for termites could be so exhausting? My daughter laughed when I expressed those sentiments...she said it was like moving, only you return to the same house. Since I hate moving, that explains a lot.

So, dear friends, signing off for a few days. Going off into the woods to Camp Meeker to a lovely vacation home after work tomorrow. Except for a lunch in town on Friday, I will read and sleep and take walks with the dog and clear my brain. No cell phone service, nor Internet. Let's just hope that the power is back on there by the time I finish working. I know it's called Camp Meeker, but I'm not really wanting to camp out with lanterns.

If I had been smart, I would have put this casserole by Shirley Walker, a friend of mine, together to bake up tomorrow night at "camp". It needs to chill for a while (8-36 hours) to meld the flavors. Try it with multi-grain bread, too. Sorry no photo for this one, but you can well imagine the green of the broccoli, brown of the bread and mushrooms, the bubbly yellow orange cheddar cheese, with some of those great browned bits, too. Mmmm.

Broccoli Mushroom Strata
by Shirley Walker

1 loaf (1 pound size, ½ inch thick slices) whole-wheat bread, crusts trimmed
¼ cup (1/8 lb.) butter or margarine, divided
1 large onion, diced
½ pound mushrooms, rinsed and sliced
3 cups cooked broccoli flowerets OR 1 package (16 oz) thawed frozen broccoli spears
2 tablespons dry basil leaves
1 teaspoon pepper
1 pound Cheddar cheese, shredded, divided
6 large eggs
3 cups milk

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Butter a 9 x 13 inch baking dish. Line the bottom snugly with a single layer of bread, cut to fit (edges can overlap slightly). Make another layer of bread to fit on top, then lift out an set aside.

In a medium frying pan over medium-high heat, melt 2 tablespoons butter and ad onion and mushrooms. Stir often until liquid evaporates and mushrooms are lightly browned, about 15 minutes. Spoon into a bowl.

Chop the broccoli. Melt the remaining butter in the frying pan and add the broccoli; stir often until broccoli is very dry. In the frying pan, stir together broccoli, basil, pepper, and onion mixture.

Distribute half the vegetable mixture over the bread layer, then cover evenly with half the cheese. Cover with the reserved bread; repeat to make the top layer.

Beat the eggs and milk until blended and pour over the casserole, moistening evenly. Cover with plastic wrap and chill 8 to 36 hours.

Bake, uncovered in preheated oven until edges of casserole are lightly browned and center is firm when gently touched, about 45 minutes. Cool for 15 minutes on a rack. Cut into rectangles.

Serves 6-8
Note: Different kinds of whole-wheat breads can be used in this dish. Choose a standard, whole-wheat, one with wheat berries, or try a multi-grain bread.

Happy trails to you, until we meet again.