Passover Spinach Muffins

Happy Passover everyone! 

Last night I went to a lovely Passover Seder given by Friends of Food. 

I made Aunt of Food's Passover Spinach Muffins which are one of my favorite Vegetable based dishes at any time of the year.  This recipe was the inspiration for the topping on my sausage blinis, now featured on the ATK Foods website and, of course, on this blog. 

This dish is vegetarian, but not vegan; however, if you can find a substitute for the eggs, you may be able to make this dish vegan.

Here is the recipe as I make it:

2 TBSP Margarine (or Butter)

Olive Oil for Pan (About 2 TBSP)

1/2 Green Pepper

1 Medium Onion

1 Celery Stalk

2 Raw Carrots

10 oz package of Frozen Chopped Spinach

3 Eggs Beaten
1 1/2 tsp Salt

1/4 tsp Fresh Ground Black Pepper

3/4 Cup of Matzo Meal

Use the margarine to generously grease a metal 12 count muffin pan.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Grate the Pepper, Onion, Celery, and Carrots in the Cuisinart with the grating disk, or chop by hand.

Heat some Olive Oil in a large Pan and put chopped fresh veggies in the pan.

Sauté vegetables stirring occasionally for about 10 minutes, until the veggies are soft.

While the vegetables are cooking on the stove, microwave the frozen spinach according to package directions, draining when done.

Take the pan with the fresh vegetables off of the heat and add the spinach to the mixture.

Combine beaten Eggs with Salt, Pepper, and Matzo Meal. 

Combine that with the vegetable mixture in the big pan.

Spoon the mix into the greased muffin cups.

Bake at 350 degrees for 45 minutes or until the muffins are firm.

Sausage Wrapped in Blini

Last night our meal was not your typical American family dinner. Something old world took over in me and I created a savory feast.

It all started at the Costco, where an assertive sample supplier foisted her sausages on my darling brood-lings. This persuasive dealer was more convincing than a bad witch with a poison apple. After an extra sample for each of the kids and a sample for Friend of Food and Me, I caved into the succulence and the pressure and bought the Amylu Smoked Chicken Gouda and Apple stuffed Sausages.

When I thought about preparing the sausages for dinner, my spirit reached back to my Russian and German roots. Something inside of me craved a thin pancake and the flavor of onions. I found a Sweet Blini recipe in my Gourmet Today cookbook which I adapted for this meal. I improvised the Onion Vegetable Topping, using a family spinach puff recipe for inspiration.  Below is a picture of my cooktop in action, simmering the sausages, cooking the crepes, cooling the vegetable topping muffins, fresh out of the 350 degree oven.

It all came together like a symphony. I got rave reviews from my family; my kids even requesting this meal again for tonight. I assure my Brood-lings, “we will have this dinner again my sweets, just let me write this blog post before I forget the recipe.”

Sausages

Cook per package directions.

Blini

1 tsp Active Dry Yeast

2 TBSP plus 1 tsp Sugar

1/4 Cup Warm Water

1 Cup All Purpose Flour

1/2 tsp Salt

1 Cup Milk

3 Large Eggs

1/2 Stick (4TBSP) Unsalted Butter, Melted and Cooled

Stir together yeast, 1 teaspoon of sugar, and warm water in a small bowl and let stand until foamy, about 5 minutes.

Transfer yeast mixture into a blender, add flour, salt, milk, and remaining 2 Tablespoons of sugar and blend until combined.

Pour into a bowl and cover with a kitchen towel.

Let stand in a warm place until almost doubled in bulk, about 1 hour.

Return mixture to blender and add eggs and butter.  Blend until smooth.

Spray a small skillet with spray oil or Pam and heat over moderately high heat until hot but not smoking.

Lift the skillet off the heat and pour in about 1/3 cup of batter (I used a small ladle for this) tilting and rotating the pan until the batter coats the bottom of the pan.  Return skillet to heat and cook crepe until undersides and edges are just set and golden, about 1 1/2 minutes.  Check with a heatproof rubber spatula to see if it is ready to flip.  Carefully flip crepe and cook about 1 minute more.  Transfer crepe onto a plate.  Spray pan again and make the next crepe.  When each is done, stack it on the plate on top of the last crepe.

Onion-Vegetable Topping

1 Onion

1 Stalk Celery

2 Carrots

1 Cup Fresh Broccoli

1 Egg

1/3 Cup Seasoned Breadcrumbs

1 tsp Salt

Dash of Pepper

Preheat Oven to 350 Degrees.

Grease a muffin pan.

Use a  Food Processor with a grating blade to grate all of the ingredients together.

Unplug and Stir Contents as you go to make sure everything is mixed thouroughly.

If you do not have a food processor, you can grate the vegetables by hand, beat the egg seperately, and mix in a bowl.

Divide the mixture evenly into muffin cups.

Cook at 350 degrees for 25-30 Minutes.

Combination

 

Lay a Blini on a plate.  Scoop one vegetable muffin onto the crepe and squash down.  Place a sausage on the vegetable layer.  Wrap Blini around Sausage.

Addendum*
I made this recipe again today.  This time I used 2/3 Cup of Breadcrumbs in the veggie topping mix instead of 1/3 cup.  It set up well in the muffin cups and were able to be a side dish on their own.  I would use less salt in this version.  The seasonings in the breadcrumbs are plenty.

Charcuterie

There is a fine line between a meatloaf and a paté, and there are not many books that can tell you how to stay on the right side of that line, whichever it may be in any particular case. To get a creamy, spreadable paté you need more than an ingredient list, an oven temperature, and a cooking time. It’s all about keeping fat suspended in meat and other ingredients. The technique isn't necessarily difficult, but you need to know it. One of the best books to explain such matters, as well as the methods of making sausage, salami, cured and smoked meat clearly and in sufficient detail for the home cook is Michael Ruhlman and Brian Polcyn’sCharcuterie: The Craft of Salting, Smoking, and Curing.



People say “don’t ask what goes into hot dogs, you don’t want to know!” But you really do want to know, don’t you? If you made them yourself, you would know, and you would learn a lot about the hot dogs you buy. Why do some franks plump up and split? They probably have more water. If you try to make a moderately lean frankfurter, like the ones you see sliced in the photo above, along with my variation on fresh saucisson de Toulouse in a choucroute garni, the texture might be denser than you expect of a factory made hot dog, and then you realize that commercial dogs must have a lot more fat or non-meat fillers than you would use if you were making them yourself--that is, if you knew what went into them. Or you might decide you like the texture of a manufactured product, but you want a different flavor, and you could choose what spices or combination of meats to use, the amount of water, and the ratio of fat to lean.

And how about that Toulouse style sausage? The photo at the top shows a dried version of the white sausage in the second photo after it’s been hanging for a week. There is no recipe for either of those sausages inRuhlman and Polcyn’s book, but the techniques and general proportions are described, and there are similar recipes, and that’s the kind of cookbook that I like. I got enough information that I could make a big batch of pork filling, stuff half of it into casings for fresh sausage, add one ingredient -- a curing salt obtained from www.sausagemaker.com -- and hang the rest in a cabinet to make a cured air-dried salami. If you have the techniques, you can use whatever fresh local ingredients you have available to make things that you like the way you like them, andCharcuterie provides those techniques, if you want to learn.