Gah, I'm flattened!

[wiseheart]

Today was the great kitchen battle: I had to do something with the spinach my friend Evie brought me yesterday, plus I had to use up some eggs before they'd go bad.

Since the big bag of spinach I got shrank to a handful after being cooked, I decided to make little pasties from the roll of excellent ready-made puff pastry that was also dangerously approaching its "best before" deadline in the fridge, filling them with a mixture of spinach, garlic, grated cheese and chopped cashews.

Paul Hollywood's original recipe asks for pine nuts, but I didn't have those and refused to buy a package just for this one dish, as they are - how could it be different - outrageously expensive. OTOH I still had some cashews left over from the Christmas baking in the freezer, so I simply used some of those. I seriously doubt that anyone would notice the difference. Well, save for Paul Hollywood, of course, but I mean ordinary people with ordinary budgets.

Here are the little darlings:



Granted, they aren't all identical, as the puff pastry was being belligerent, plus I didn't have enough spinach filling, so the ones with the sesame seed on top are filled with chopped ham, creme freche and grated cheese. Also very yummy, though.

I also made an 8-egg sponge cake for a Swiss roll, which I filled with strawberry jam, chopped strawberries that I sprinkled with a little eggnog and white Raspelschokolade - no idea what those are called in English. The Swiss roll is currently resting in the fridge. I hope it will harden a bit to keep its shape and won't fall apart when cut. I'll post a picture tomorrow.

Other than that I bought my monthly ticket, made a food run and we had a visit from the physiotherapist. Right now I'm fairly dead on my feet, but at least we have leftovers for tomorrow. ;)

Comments

[meathiel]

Hmmm ... that looks yummy.
You kept very busy today!

[wiseheart.livejournal.com]

Yes, it was an exhausting day. But I was really worried about foodstuffs going bad, so I thought I'll use them up in one heroic attempt. *g*

The little pasties were very yummy indeed. The physiotherapist sampled them, too, and approved — she's a devout spinach lover. We ate the leftovers for supper, so they're all gone now.

[chocolate-frapp.livejournal.com]

Yeah, some foods inflate when you cook them, spinach shrinks.

[adafrog.livejournal.com]

yum

[red-day-dawning.livejournal.com]

Yum, yum! I have to go through my fridge today and figure out what needs to be cooked first. I doubt I’ll come up with something so tasty though. But I really should buy some puff pastry...

[elwenlj.livejournal.com]

Those pastries look and sound awesome! I could eat the entire plateful.

[noadvertising.livejournal.com]

Those spinach pastries look fabulous!

[wiseheart.livejournal.com]

Tell me about that! Couscous, for one, secretly grows overnight if there's some of it left over! And from one 100ml-glass of rice we have a dish that lasts three days!

[wiseheart.livejournal.com]

Oh yes! *g*

[wiseheart.livejournal.com]

It's handy to always have some puff pastry in the fridge. It's so versatile!

[wiseheart.livejournal.com]

We did. *g*

[wiseheart.livejournal.com]

They were very yummy. I'll definitely make them more often.

[mirasaui.livejournal.com]

Ooh, the spinach puffs (and the ham ones) look divine! I've never heard of adding nuts, will have something new to try out :0) The Swiss roll sounds good too.

[wiseheart.livejournal.com]

I was surprised by the original recipe myself; nuts and garlic together? OTOH people put nuts into pesto, too, so perhaps the idea isn't that far-fetched.