Spinach Pie

Some years ago--probably about 32-- I received a Greek cookbook for my birthday.  I was thrilled.  The first dish I set out to prepare was Spanakopita.  I love the stuff.  I discovered that Filo dough is a pain to work with and since I was cooking for a family, I just didn't have time to deal with it on a regular basis.   So I experimented with ingredients to come up with a family friendly recipe that I could throw together after work.  This recipe turned out to be a family favorite and was often served for brunch.  Emily requested it every year for her birthday dinner as well.

I hadn't prepared this recipe for a few years but I had some leftover puff pastry so I thought I'd make a half sized recipe of it for the spouse and myself.  It was as good as I remember it.

I hope you enjoy it as much as we do.

Spinach Pie

Printable Recipe

Serves at least 8.

Ingredients:

1 box frozen puff pastry, thawed (2 sheets)

3 - 10 ounce boxes frozen chopped spinach (or 2 - 1 pound bags)

1 - 15 oz. container Ricotta cheese

½ cup freshly shredded Parmesan cheese

1/2 tsp. Ground nutmeg

1 egg, beaten

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Roll out one sheet of puff pastry to
fit the bottom of a 9 X 13 inch glass baking dish.  Cook spinach
(I cook in microwave for about 5 minutes) and drain.  Combine
spinach, cheeses, egg and nutmeg in large bowl.  Stir until mixed well.  
Spread spinach mixture over the puff pastry.  Roll out second sheet of
puff pastry to fit on top of spinach mixture.  Seal the top pastry to the
sides of the dish.

Bake in 350 degree oven for 30 - 35 minutes or until pastry is golden.

Vegetable Beef Soup with Barley

I've always loved soup.  I've always thought I could live on nothing but soup!  So naturally when a nasty cold spell hit us a couple of days ago, I had to make soup.  I used to make this recipe when we were first married and hadn't made it in probably 25 years.  For some reason, this was the soup I craved.  I made this recipe up based on a number of others and I've updated it a little to reflect the changes in some of the ingredients.   Barley is one of my favorite ingredients in soup which is one reason why this is so appealing to me.

Soup making has been revolutionized by the Instant Pot which allows one to cook certain ingredients much faster than in the past.  I had a stovetop pressure cooker when I was first married so pressure cooking isn't totally new to me.  Being able to do everything in one pot, however, is!

I actually like this soup better the second day.  As with any soup cooked with beef, the broth can be a little fatty until the fat is skimmed off.  I've always found it easier to refrigerate the soup overnight which allows the fat to solidify on top.  I just remove the solid fat and dispose of it. 

This soup with a nice bread really does make a complete meal!

Vegetable Beef Soup with Barley

printable recipe

Ingredients:

3 lbs. Beef shanks (or 2 lbs. Beef shanks and 1 lb. stew beef)

1- 1 pint, 2-oz. Can tomato juice (or 3 - 5.5 oz cans)

⅓ cup chopped onion

1 cup diced celery

4 teaspoons salt (or to taste)

2 teaspoons Wocestershire Sauce

¼ teaspoon chili powder

2 teaspoons beef bullion paste or granules

2 bay leaves

6 cups water

1 - 14.5 ounce can tomatoes

1 - 16 ounce bag frozen mixed vegetables

¾ cup barley

Combine meat, tomato juice, onion, seasonings, celery and 6 cups water in soup kettle.  
Cover and simmer 2 hours.  Cut meat from bones in large cubes.  Skim off excess fat.  
Add meat, vegetables, tomatoes, barley and simmer 1 hour.   

Serves at least 8.

Instant Pot Instructions:

Using saute function, lightly brown meat on both sides and remove.  Lightly brown onion
and celery in drippings.  Add everything except the tomatoes, vegetables and barley.  

Using the manual setting, set for 40 minutes high pressure.   When cooking is completed,
allow pressure to drop naturally for 5 minutes then switch to quick release.

Turn pot to saute and add tomatoes,  vegetables and barley.  Allow the soup to boil for
about 5 minutes then switch to slow cook, highest temperature and cook until vegetables
and barley are cooked (about 15 minutes).

Christmas Breakfast

As I mentioned in my inaugural post--we've been enjoying this Christmas breakfast since 1989 when I found both recipes in the holiday food section of the Washington post.  I clipped and saved the whole section, which was about make ahead Christmas morning recipes, and have made these ever since.

Our Christmas breakfast consists of Country Puff Pastries which can be made any time ahead and frozen or they can be refrigerated for a few days, and Providence Hot Apples, which are prepared the night before and cooked in the morning.   Our routine was to get up, turn on the oven to preheat and make coffee.  We'd pop the apples and pastries in the oven while we all opened our stockings.  Then we'd eat.

After breakfast, it was time for presents--and Mimosas or Sweet Sparkling Wine (usually Asti Spumante) mixed with blueberry juice and Chambord.  That drink doesn't have an official name, but I like to refer to it as a Berry Merry. 

The pastry recipe makes 27 pastries so we'd save some for New Years Day breakfast as well.

Country Puff Pastries
Printable Recipe

--These savory treats come from the Springdale Country Inn in Lincoln, Va.   The entire family will love them--even the kids!  Think of them as an elegant version of an Egg McMuffin.   For ease, buy frozen puff pastry at the grocery store and thaw in the refrigerator.  I get my ham from the deli--usually Virginia baked ham, and the Canadian bacon is the packaged one from the grocery store.

Makes 27 pastries

3 sheets frozen puff pastry (1 1/2 boxes of the most readily available brand), thawed
4 ounces grated Swiss cheese (1 cup)
2 tablespoons grated Parmesan cheese
2 ounces silvered country ham (about 1/3 cup packed)
2 ounces Canadian bacon, chopped (about 1/3 cup packed)
3 hard boiled eggs, chopped
3 tablespoons heavy cream
black pepper to taste
1 egg
1 teaspoon water.

Mix cheeses, ham, bacon, hard-boiled eggs, heavy cream and pepper in a large bowl.

Using one pastry sheet at a time, roll out sheet to a 12 inch square.  Cut pastry dough into 4 inch squares (3 rows of 3 squares) and place 1 tablespoon of the filling in the middle of each square.   Make an egg wash by mixing the remaining egg with 1 teaspoon of water. Brush the edges of each pastry square with a little egg wash, then fold each square top left corner to bottom right corner and press to seal the edges together with the tines of a fork.  Trim the edges with a knife if they need evening up.  Repeat with the other 2 sheets of pastry.  If you don't plan on baking them immediately, wrap each individually in plastic wrap and refrigerate up to 3 days or freeze.

When ready to bake, place them on a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper and bake in a preheated 350 degree oven for 15 minutes or longer if pastries have been frozen.  There is no need to thaw the pastries first.

Providence Hot Apples
Printable Recipe

--adapted from Breakfast with Friends by Elizabeth Alston, 1989

10 servings

4 pounds (about 8) Granny Smith or other tart apples
2/3 cup granulated sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons ground cinnamon

Mix sugar and cinnamon in a large bowl.  Peel and core the apples then cut them in 1/2 inch chunks.  Add the apples to the sugar/cinnamon mixture in the large bowl and toss so that the apples are coated with the sugar/cinnamon mixture.  Cover the bowl and refrigerate over night.

One half hour before serving, heat oven to 400 degrees.  Butter a 9 X 13 inch baking dish and add the apples, including all the sugar mixture and juices.  Spread them out and bake for 20 minutes, stirring 3 or 4 times until the apples are tender but not mushy.  Serve very hot.

Family Traditions--Christmas!

This is my inaugural post.  This little project grew out of a conversation I had with my grown kids on Christmas Day.  You see, we have always had certain culinary traditions in our family.  Christmas morning we've always enjoyed Country Puff Pastries and Providence Hot Apples before opening our gifts.  We've done that since 1989.  So this year, as the pastries were cooking, the conversation went something like this:

Me:  If I ever drop dead, you need to know where to find those recipes.  There's a Southern Living Breakfast and Brunch cookbook on the bottom shelf of the kitchen bookcase with a bunch of clippings stuck in the front.  Two of those clippings are our Christmas recipes.

Emily:  Mom, I'll never remember that!

Me:  Well I do intend to type them all up and make a family cookbook, including the two small ones I made of your grandmothers' recipes.

Jeremy:  Put them online.  Make a blog.  Monetize the hell out of it. Call it Mrs. E's Recipes only spell it with a z at the end.

So here we are--without the monetizing.

Welcome to Mrs. E's Recipeez.  You are invited to enjoy our family's traditions.  please note--unlike most food blogs, I may or may not have pictures.  I'm posting recipes that I may not have made in years so they will just be without photos.  If I do make them, I'll update with pictures.  This is our family recipe archive.

I realized how important maintaining family recipes was when cleaning out my mother's house about 14 years ago.  She had a huge pantry full of cookbooks which I had to go through.  I was able to find many of her favorite recipes easily enough because she also had a file and she had submitted many of them to her church cookbook.  There was one, however, that I was desperate to find.  Though out my childhood and as I was growing up, Mom made one particular cookie that I dearly loved.  It was different than any other I'd ever had--almost like a pastry.  It was a yeast dough with butter and sour cream but no sugar.  It was rolled flat then sprinkled with a sugar/vanilla mixture, folded, rolled, sprinkled again--with that process being repeated several times.  The dough was then cut into 1 inch wide strips that were 4 inches long, each piece was twisted and put on the cookie sheet.  When they baked, the cookies fanned out on the ends into the flakiest, yummiest layers.  I can't begin to describe how much I loved these.

I remembered them as being a Pillsbury Bake Off winner from around 1958 - 1960 and they were in one of those little books you see at the grocery store checkout.  I looked through everything.  Books were bagged and donated and I was distraught about not having that recipe.

There were several bags of books on Mom's porch that needed to be put out for donation pick up so I went over there one more time after work on a freezing December afternoon.  I decided to go through those bags one more time.  Lo and behold--there it was!

Pillsbury Bake Off recipes with the price of 25 cents on the lower right hand corner.  This was probably one of the keepsakes from my parent's house that meant the most.

So I've been continuing that tradition.  Starlight Sugar Crisps for Christmas.  That recipe and many more will be posted here for family and friends to enjoy.

So--since I talked about the Starlight Sugar Crisps, That will be the first recipe!

Enjoy!

Starlight Sugar Crisps

Printable Recipe

Absolutely Vicki’s most favorite cookie in the world!

 From Pillsbury Bake-off late 1950’s or early 1960’s--out of print

Soften:

1 packet active dry yeast (or 1 cake compressed yeast) in

1/4 cup lukewarm water.

Sift together:

3 3/4 cups sifted all-purpose flour and 1 1/2 teaspoons salt into mixing bowl.

Cut in:

1 cup butter until particles are the size of small peas.

Blend in:

2 beaten eggs

1/2 cup sour cream (thick or commercial)

1 teaspoon vanilla and the softened yeast.

Mix thoroughly.  Cover;  chill at least 2 hours. (Dough may be stored in refrigerator for up to 4 days and baked as needed.)

Combine:

1 1/2 cups sugar

2 teaspoons vanilla

Roll out:

Half  of chilled dough on floured surface sprinkled with about 1/2 cup of the vanilla sugar.  Roll out to a 16 X 8 inch rectangle.  Sprinkle with about 1 Tablespoon of the vanilla sugar.

Fold one end of dough over center.  Fold other end over to make three layers.  Turn 1/4 way around and repeat rolling and folding twice, sprinkling board with additional vanilla sugar as needed.

Roll out to a 16 X 8 inch rectangle about 1/4 inch thick.

Cut into 4 X 1 inch strips.  Twist each strip 2 or 3 times.  Place on ungreased baking sheets.  Repeat entire process with remaining dough and vanilla sugar.

Bake in moderate oven (375 degrees) 15 to 20 minutes until light golden  brown .

Note:  The chilled dough is very stiff.  I always divide the dough in half and pat into a fat rectangle, wrap in saran wrap, then refrigerate until ready to use.  It’s a little easier to roll out this way!