Quiche with asparagus

Quiche with asparagus
Yield: 8 servings, 1 slice each

Ingredients:
1 recipe French Tart Dough (see note below)
1/2 lb or 8 oz asparagus, which is about 10-12 whole spears
6-8 large eggs
1/4 cup milk
1/2 cup Emmentaler or Swiss shredded
1/2 cup Gruyere cheese, shredded
salt and pepper to taste
1/8 tsp nutmeg

Directions:
1. Prepare the tart dough for a 9" round pie plate or pan.  See note below. This can be done 1 day ahead of time.
2. Preheat the oven to 350º F or 180º C.
3. Bring a large pot of water to boil. Once boiling, add the asparagus whole and cook for 2 minutes.
4. Remove the asparagus from the boiling water and place under cold water or plunge the spears into ice water to blanch them and stop them from cooking any further. When cool enough to handle cut them in half in the middle, and then split them down the center so that the halves can lie on top of the quiche.
5. Put all the eggs in a large mixing bowl, add the milk, and beat together until well incorporated.
6. Add the shredded cheese to the eggs, and season with salt and pepper, and nutmeg.
7. Pour the quiche batter on top of the prepped tart dough.
8. Carefully arrange the asparagus halves on top. Bake the quiche for 40 minutes until lightly golden on top and cooked through. Allow to cool and set about 30 minutes before serving. This quiche pairs nicely with a small side salad.

Note:
This French tart dough recipe is one of my favorites. The instructions, comments, and pictures are superbly presented so I have opted out of recreating it here.  The recipe from the link is good for an 8" or 9" pan, but anything larger than that and you will find that the dough doesn't quite make it up the sides. To me this method of tart dough is much easier to prepare than pie dough, and much more forgiving if learning for the first time. The method is to place all of the tart dough ingredients (except the flour) into the oven until the mixture becomes piping hot. Then flour is stirred into the hot mixture and the entire thing transforms itself into a dough ball that can easily be placed into a pie plate or fluted pan.

Autumn quiche

This quiche, baked up from seasonal CSA kale and escarole, was among some of the better things I baked up this past fall, hence the name autumn quiche. If you don't bake the quiche, at least tuck the French tart dough recipe into your web archives. It is that good.















Autumn Quiche
Yield: 6 servings

Ingredients:
1 recipe French Tart Dough
olive oil
6 large eggs
splash milk
3 cups chopped raw kale and raw escarole
1-2 cloves chopped garlic
3 tbsp kalamata olives, chopped
1/2 cup shredded cheese (cheddar, or a goat cheese would be very good)
1/4 cup chopped basil
2-3 spring onions, chopped fine
salt and pepper to taste
pinch nutmeg

Directions:
1. Prep the tart dough. Allow it to cool before using. This tart dough is one of the best out there. I have used it to make lemon tarts, chocolate tarts, almond-pear tarts, and now quiches. It never fails. It's simple, it's easy, it's my favorite.
2. Once your quiche (tart dough) is cooling, heat up about 1 tsp of olive oil in a large skillet. Once it's hot sauté the kale, escarole, and garlic in the olive oil. Add a few tbsp of water to the pan if the greens start to stick.
3. Turn the eat to low and let it wilt down. Turn the heat off and set aside.
4. Prep the oven to 350º F or 180º C.
5. In a small bowl, combine the chopped olives, shredded cheese, and herbs.
6. In a large bowl, mix together the eggs and milk with a whisk. Add the remaining ingredients to the egg mixture and season with salt and pepper, and nutmeg.
7. Add the egg mixture to the quiche dough, and bake in the oven for 35 minutes, or until done. Let stand about 1 hour before serving. Stores well and makes excellent leftover lunch where you can brag to coworkers about how the escarole melts into the quiche.

Tex-Mex veggie burgers

Lately, I've been addicted to the Homesick Texan blog which I found from Rabbit Food Rocks, which I found from Herbivoracious. That is what I call blog shopping. So many cooks, so little time.

I spent an entire afternoon carefully gleaning what I wanted to cook from the Homesick Texan blog. Because I'm resourceful and a planner, I brought ancho chili powder back with me from my US visit.  Planner: bring back hard-to-find ingredients; resourceful: I came up with these Tex-Mex veggie burgers.

Oats make an excellent binder in veggie burgers. I think these could easily do without the eggs. Plan to use cooked rice and cooked beans (or canned beans) in the burgers. It saves time.

Tex-Mex veggie burgers
Recipe inspired from various postings on the Homesick Texan blog
Yield: 8 patties; use 1/2 cup measurement to shape and mold. 


2 cups of cooked beans (I used a mixture of pinto and red kidney 3:1)
1/2 cup chopped onion
1/3 cup chopped bell pepper
2 cloves garlic, shredded or minced fine
1/2 cup mushrooms, sliced
1/4 cup mixed chopped parsley and cilantro
1 cup cooked long-grain rice (approx.)
3/4 cup oats, can use up to 1 cup, or a bit more
2 tbsp panko breadcrumbs, or homemade ones
2 eggs
SECRET (not-so-secret anymore!) ingredient: about 2 tbsp canned jalapeno chunks and a bit of their juices

Ancho chili powder
1 tbsp ancho chili powder
1/3 tsp cayenne chili powder
1 tsp salt
2 tsp cumin
1 tbsp dried basil or oregano
1 tsp smoked paprika (such as Spanish or Hungarian hot paprika)
pinch cinnamon

To prepare the ancho chili powder, mix everything together in a small bowl and set aside. You'll use up all of it in the burger recipe.

Directions:
Note: Things that make this dish go faster: 1. have all the beans cooked before you begin. 2. have rice cooked. If you don't have cooked rice to start, begin by cooking 1 cup of long-grain rice (in a medium sized sauce pan add 1 cup of long grain rice and 2 and 1/4 cups water. Heat up over high heat, stirring the rice about two times, until the rice looks porous. Once it looks porous and filled with wholes and is bubbling like crazy but you don't think the water will cook off. Cover the rice with a lid, turn the heat off and let it sit there until ready to use (or let it sit there for at least 15 minutes, don't touch it). 

Alright have you located your beans and rice? Good.

Take cooked beans and place them in a large mixing bowl. To this bowl add chopped canned jalapeno chunks along with some of the canned juices. Add in herbs and mix together. Remove about 1 cup of the mixture and set this aside, then smash (with a potato masher) the remaining beans in the big bowl together.

Next, heat up 1 tbsp of peanut oil in a cast-iron pan over medium heat. Saute the onions, mushrooms, and bell peppers. When the mushrooms begin to brown at the edges, toss in the garlic and stir around until just fragrant. Is there anything better than the smell of sauteing garlic? For real.

Now back to the mashed beans. When the sauteed veggies are cool enough to handle add them to the bowl along with the chili powder. Using your hands or a big spoon mix everything together. Add in 1/2 cup of the oats and 1/2 cup of the rice. Start mixing everything together. You want everything to stick together without falling apart. Add the eggs and work it in little by little with the remaining rice and oats, and breadcrumbs. Using your hands is the best way to tell if everything is sticking together.

Place the bowl in the fridge and allow it to set for 30 minutes or longer. This does two things, it allows the oats to expand a bit, and it makes the mixture stick together. Using a 1/2 cup measuring cup as a mold, spoon the mixture and tamp it down with a spoon (or your hand). Carefully, remove it; give it a few smacks against a cutting board and shape it into a patty.

Fry them 4 at a time in a cast-iron pan about 4-5 minutes each side before flipping. Serve with lettuce, tomatoes, cucumber slices, pickled jalapenos, and anything else.

Banana oat muffins and nutrition ranting

The older I get the crankier I get with nutrition - especially because I think about how connected food and environment are to one another, and how regardless of the sheer outcome and breadth of many nutrition studies, there is no framework to pump the changes into, or rather that those changes seem excessively slow. When I learn about European (and here I mean country-specific) nutrition policies I can't help but think that the US is in the dark ages. Don't worry I will share those in another post.

I was especially disheartened to read about a study that was recently published in the Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine which found students at half of US elementary schools could buy unhealthy foods outside of school meals. These are competitive foods such as cookies, cakes, and baked goods which are usually sold through vending machines, a la carte lines in the cafeteria, and in school stores. Researchers found that unhealthy snack foods were sold more in the south, where obesity rates are the highest - in fact 60% of public elementary schools in the south were found to be selling unhealthy foods; in the west this number drops to 24%, and in the midwest it is 30%. While the study found that fruits and vegetables were offered to be sold as well, they didn't sell as well as sugary salty foods (duh). If you follow Food Politics, or the Lunch Tray, you may have read about the recent changes, and the pushback, and then again the move forward with updated new federal nutrition guidelines for school nutrition (elementary through high school). Before these new regs were published,  competitive foods were exempt from federal regs, but now they are included in the report as being bound by the same criteria, and the report suggests that competitive foods follow the Institute of Medicine's report. I look forward to Bettina Elias Siegel's school nutrition FAQ. I hope that we can transition to real foods, move away from nutrient reductionism, and take back our food culture. Public schools, where most children learn fundamental basics about their world, have a place in changing food culture, and teaching students how to understand and apply nutrition.

Walmart recently announced their own front-of-package nutrition labeling system. Marion Nestle of Food Politics does an excellent write up on Walmart, presents research on labeling (e.g. a stoplight system works very well), and how Walmart should have waited to release guidelines so they could be in line with the FDA's front-of-package labeling guidelines. Should Walmart be providing their own nutrition labels on the front of packs? Probably not, but they are responding to increasing consumer demand that may help to alleviate the guilt that people probably feel when they feel overwhelmed by the nutrition label; or it's good for business, and it looks like they did something positive; or it will generate good PR and increase sales. Regardless, I still think it shows that businesses change their strategies to meet consumer demand. These changes coupled with concrete federal nutrition polices on advertising and labeling could make it very difficult for food and beverage companies to market and sell bad foods. And this just hot off my RSS: food companies using the First Amendment to market and sell any foods to kids. Marion Nestle why are you such a bad ass?

And finally some good nutrition news. When I was doing my catch-up reading on portion sizes for this month's month of meals, I came across an article from Harvard that revamped muffin recipes. Muffins are the poster child for portion distortion. Stacked on top of each other at coffeehouses, they are closer to processed cakes and cookies than healthy breakfast food. The average size of a muffin has probably quadrupled in size, and it's packed full of refined flour and sugar. Muffins can actually be quite healthy and reasonable. So as you become more enraged, or interested in the nutrition news out of the US, I find I actually enjoy writing about these things, I wanted to share some healthy banana oat muffins I baked up this morning:





nom nom nom nom

Banana oat muffins
Recipe from Deborah Madison's VCFE
Yield: 1 dozen

Ingredients:
2 large ripe bananas
3/4 cup buttermilk or 1/2 yogurt thinned with water
1/3 cup brown sugar (can use 1/4 cup with equally good results)
1 egg
2 tbsp canola or peanut oil
1 cup rolled oats
1 and 1/2 cups whole-wheat pastry flour
1 tsp nutmeg or cinnamon
1 and 1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 cup walnuts, optional

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 375º F/190º C.
2. Lightly grease muffin pan with oil.
3. In a large mixing bowl mix mash the bananas, and add an egg and the oil. Mix it together a bit. Then add the buttermilk, brown sugar, and oats. Mix it together stirring with a big spoon.
4. In a small mixing bowl, combine the flour with cinnamon and baking soda. Add this to the big mixing bowl. In swift strokes mix everything together until the batter just comes together. Spoon about 1/4 cup or more into the muffin pan. Bake for 20-25 minutes, or until golden and fragrant. Once cool store leftovers in an airtight container. This makes an awesome breakfast with a bit of fruit and hot steaming coffee. 

I've made this recipe so many times that I've experimented with 1 banana (turns out just fine); I forgot to add the oil once (it was fine, but was a bit dry on day 2 and 3); I subbed cinnamon for nutmeg; I reduced the sugar from 1/3 cup to 1/4 cup and it was the same; I experimented with using milk instead of water (3/4 cup milk + 1 tsp vinegar = acceptable buttermilk substitute); I have used the following flour proportions which have all been excellent: 1) 1/2 all-purpose and 1/2 whole-wheat flour, 2) 100% whole-wheat flour,  and 3) half pastry flour and half whole wheat.

Sweet potato pineapple muffins

Sweet potato with pineapple and fresh ginger.

Sweet potato with dates. Look at that fine crumb. 

Prepared muffin pans with oat-brown sugar topping.

Filled to just about 1/2 inch from the top, leave enough room for them to rise.

Fresh baked muffins, mmm lekker. 

In keeping with my goal of testing recipes multiple times, these sweet-potato pineapple muffins have been baked 4 times. The recipe has been adapted from Deborah Madison's Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone. The original recipe calls for 1/3 cup of candied ginger. Instead, I used 1/3 cup canned chopped pineapple, or dates. I add in 1 T of fresh grated ginger, along with 1/8 tsp fresh grated nutmeg.

Muffins are quick breads meaning that they don't need to leaven or rise. To bake muffins, mix together all of the dry ingredients in a bowl, and all of the wet ingredients in another bowl. Add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients and with a large spoon (not a hand or stand mixer) combine the wet and dry together with swift quick strokes. Avoid overmixing. The batter is ready when all of the flour is incorporated into the wet, a good rule of thumb is that the batter looks slightly undermixed. Drop batter by the spoonfuls into a greased muffin pan.

In general I try to make healthier modifications, but I find the proportions of this recipe work out nicely, and they aren't too sweet with a 1/2 cup of brown sugar, or heavy with 1/4 cup of vegetable oil. Subbing in whole-wheat pastry flour is fine. The pineapple and sweet potato make a delicious moist end product.

Sweet potato pineapple muffins

Yield: 1 dozen muffins

Ingredients listed in order of wet and dry:

Dry

1 and 3/4 cup all-purpose flour (can use whole wheat pastry flour)

1 tsp baking powder

1 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp salt

1 tsp ground cinnamon

1/8 tsp nutmeg

Wet

3/4 cup cooked sweet potato, mashed (canned or cooked pumpkin would work too)

1/3 cup canned chopped pineapple, or dates, or candied ginger

1 tbsp fresh grated ginger (leave out if using candied ginger)

1/2 cup buttermilk (see note below)

1/4 cup vegetable oil, plus a tiny bit extra to grease muffin pan

2 eggs, beaten

a heaping 1/2 cup of brown sugar (yes I know it's a dry ingredient, but add it to the wet ingredients first)

Note: if you don't have buttermilk, yogurt thinned with water works, or add 1/4 tsp of vinegar to a 1/2 cup of milk. Stir the milk and vinegar together and let stand 10 minutes.

Directions:

Set oven to 375 ºF; grease a muffin pan or line them with muffin liners. 

1. Combine the dry ingredients from flour to nutmeg in a medium-size mixing bowl. Stir together to ensure that it is well mixed. Set aside.

2. Combine the wet ingredients together in a large mixing bowl. Stir together to combine. A sturdy spoon is sufficient as muffins do not require a hand or stand electric mixer.

3. Add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients. You should add the dry ingredients all at once. Stir together, scraping down the flour from the sides of the bowl. The mixing is done when the flour is mostly all incorporated into the wet batter. Undermixing is fine, but don't leave any huge clumps of flour.

4. Drop batter by the spoonful into a prepared muffin pan. Bake 20-25 minutes until a toothpick or fork inserted comes out clean. 

For the oat-brown sugar topping:

2 tbsp butter, softened

2 tbsp oats or more

1 tbsp flour

1 tbsp brown sugar or regular sugar

small dribble of vanilla extract

Combine all the ingredients. A fork works nicely to mash everything together. Distribute evenly over muffin batter once they are in the muffin pan. Seriously, I've been making this topping since my 9th grade home-ec class. 

Rhubarb Cake

Trust me you want to try this. This is one of the best cakes ever, and it's simple to prepare. Recipe and instructions are from my friend, Kyle. I think, I'd make her proud.

Pretty watermelon colors

Rhubarb impresses, even the peels are gorgeous

Peeled 

and chopped

Batter resembles cookie dough more than cake batter

Set in a pie plate

Sifted flour and sugar on top

Rhubarb cake out of the oven

Rhubarb Cake

Rabarberstaart by Kyle M. 

Yield: 1, 9" cake or tart

Ingredients:

approx 1/2 cup butter, at room temperature (100 g)
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 brown sugar (together 200 g sugars)
4 tbsp milk
2 eggs

1.5 tsp vanilla (or 2 packs vanilla sugar)

approx 1 and 1/4 cups self-rising flour (200 g)

3-4 rhubarb stocks, peeled and diced

2 tbsp flour and sugar sifted on top, or omit and serve dusted with a bit of powdered sugar.

1 tsp fresh grated ginger, optional

Special tools: mixing bowl, hand mixer, vegetable peeler.

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350 °F (180 °C) and grease a 9" pie plate or cake pan.

2. Prep the rhubarb. If it is young you won't need to peel it much. 

3. In a large mixing bowl, cream together the room temperature butter, when it gets light and fluffy, add the sugars and beat together until combined and fluffy. Scrape down the sides of the bowl as you go. 
4. Add in 4 tbsp milk, and continue to mix. Add the eggs one and a time, incorporating them into the batter. When you add the second egg, also add the vanilla extract, and grated ginger if using. Beat until everything is incorporated. 
5. Add the flour and mix until combined. The batter will resemble a slightly wetter cookie dough batter (it will not look like cake batter).
6. Stir in the chopped rhubarb, and remove the batter to a greased pie plate or cake pan. Smooth the top, and lightly sift 2 tbsp flour and sugar on top.

7. Bake 30-40 minutes, until golden on top, or a fork or toothpick inserted comes out clean.


This recipe was updated on March 23, 2012 to reflect steps that made the preparation much easier. 

Flemish-style white asparagus

First off, I am in love with the Belgian cooking show Dagelijkse Kost. In love! The online videos are useful in language learning, it focuses heavily on Belgian sourced ingredients, and the recipes are a great way to learn more about modernized Belgian cuisine. Take for instance, asperges op Vlaamse wijze, white asparagus lightly poached then topped with a parsley-egg-butter sauce. The show has weekly menus accompanied with videos, recipes, shopping tips, and price estimates.

My friend, Nico, was impressed with my ability to understand Chef Jeroen Meus's Leuvense dialect, but this is precisely the kind of Dutch I'm learning. I attempt to speak Belgian Dutch - er - Flemish. Plus, 3 minute video segments on cooking are perfect. The context is largely understandable, I can hear and listen to the way the ingredients and methods are supposed to sound like (trust me onion, ui, felt like a god-awful tongue twister). 

One quick thing on dialects. While all Belgian Flemish schoolchildren learn standard Dutch/Nederlands, one will find that dialects are the form of spoken language. They vary from town to town, and by region. So, if you are from West Flanders the dialect there (although they still speak Dutch/Flemish) tends to skip a lot of sounds, and if you are from Limburg, you tend to make the rolling "rrrr" sound in the back of your throat, but somehow not a guttural "rrrrr." Whereas in Leuven, it's a mixture of geographical placement (being so close to Brussels) that the Flemish in a way sounds like a cross between the soft intonations of French together with an English person speaking very softly (totally not accurate). It has a wave-like rhythm, and I do realize, I'm beating this whole thing into the ground, but basically as a language learner, I'm learning standard proper Dutch at the university, but no one understands me here - and I'm sure if I were placed in Holland, no one would understand me there either. I speak most efficiently among other non-native language learners, and if you try speaking Flemish/Dutch with locals they'll often have difficulty understanding you, realize you are a foreigner, and automatically switch to English. This is frustrating to language learners, but is truly a Belgian Flemish trait. They never expect you to fully converse, always appreciate the attempt to speak, and because they know and speak English completely fluently, will do this to accommodate you. 

Anyways, learning the language here has been fun. I've just completed exams for Level 2, and feel like I've gotten everything I wanted out of the courses. I'm able to make simple appointments or requests over the phone, can buy international tickets at the train station, and with a little help of cooking shows, can now pronounce most of the fruits and vegetables I buy at the city markets.

I made this recipe from Dagelijkse Kost, a cooking show on the Belgian TV channel Eén.  I won't lie, I had to watch the video several times, and maybe hit Google Translate once. Enjoy or as they say here, eet smakelijk!

Asperges op Vlaamse wijze

Flemish-style Asparagus

Serves 2

Ingredients:

1 dozen or more fresh white asparagus

3 eggs, hard-boiled (1 tsp vinegar if hard boiling them)

1/2 cup chopped curly parsley

salt and pepper to taste

fresh nutmeg (probably less than 1/8 tsp)

1/2 cup butter or 100 g butter

Directions

1. Add the eggs, vinegar, and enough water to a small saucepan. Bring it to a light boil and cook the eggs 10 minutes. Add the eggs to a cold water bath to cool. Peel when cool enough to handle.
2. Lightly wash the asparagus and set aside. Take a vegetable peeler, and while holding the tip, peel all the way around.
3. Set the peeled asparagus in a pot filled with cold lightly-salted water. Heat the pot over medium, being careful not to boil. Once the water simmers, turn it off, and let the asparagus sit in the warm water for 5-10 minutes. Then set the asparagus on a plate until ready to use.
4. Place the butter in a small saucepan, and heat it until it simmers. You'll be clarifying the butter, so skim off the white milk solids on the top and set aside. Meanwhile, peel the eggs.
5. Mash the eggs coarsely with a potato masher. Add in parsley, butter, salt and pepper, and nutmeg. If too thick add in a 1-2 tbsp of water until the sauce has a nice consistency.
6. Set the asparagus on plates and top each with half of the sauce.

Since I served this for dinner, I used up the discarded buttery milk solids by frying up some veggie sausages, and although definitely not part of the cuisine, it rounded out the dish nicely.  

Eet smakelijk!

Bean and beet way-better-than meat balls

Bean beet balls on top of some pasta



Beets are lovely eh?



Prepping the beans and beets





These bean balls are made out of mashed kidney beans and a small shredded beet. They come together quickly needing minimal kitchen tools. Omit the beets if you don't have them, they aren't necessary, I just liked the idea of how the beets give them a nice color and nutritional boost. If using a food processor, process very lightly; a potato masher and 10 minutes is fine if you want to do it the lazy way. Just add ingredients one-by-one and mash in a large bowl. Chilling the filling allows it to set, but if pressed for time can be omitted. Be liberal with the spices - thyme, basil, marjoram, or any mixture can easily replace oregano. 

Yield: ~20 balls

Ingredients:

1-2 tbsp garlic chopped

about 1 and ½ cups cooked kidney beans, or 1, 14 oz can kidney beans rinsed and drained

½ tsp salt

½ tsp paprika

1 tsp oregano

pinch cayenne

1 egg, beaten

1 small beet shredded

¾ cup bread crumbs

¼ cup oats

1 tsp water

olive oil to fry

Directions:

1. Add chopped garlic and kidney beans to a bowl. Begin to mash together lightly add in shredded beet and continue to mash until the mixture begins to come together. This should take 5 minutes. Add in salt, paprika, oregano, and cayenne pepper. Continue to mash together. Stir in beaten egg and 1 tsp water and combine. The mixture will be sticky. Add in 2 tbsp of bread crumbs and oats and continue to mix together until the bean mixture can hold together well enough (without crumbling).
2. Place the bean mixture in the fridge for 10 minutes.
3. When done, roll the bean mixture into small balls. Place them on a tray or plate and allow to chill for 15 minutes.
4. When ready to cook, add 1-2 tbsp of olive oil to a wide non-stick skillet. Heat over medium heat until hot. Add in half the balls and cook until golden 5-7 minutes. Carefully turn balls over so that each side gets cooked. Remove cooked bean balls and add the second batch to the pan. You might need to add additional 1 tbsp of olive oil. The bean balls tend to soak up oil, so cook them on medium heat until golden 15-20 minutes total for all of them. I leave them in the pan on low-heat so they are warm when the rest of the meal is ready.
5. Serve on top of pasta or in anything.   

Turkish Pide with Eggplant and Feta

What do Turkish pide's and Nirvana have in common? Nothing, except that I'm writing up this post while listening to Nirvana's Smells Like Teen Spirit. Pide's make me want to thrash my head around. Forget it, pide's are like reaching a pizza nirvana. You can see that I should just stick to writing about food and forget about everything else (but quick side note, if you want to channel your teenage years, don't miss the 90's show from NPR's All Songs Considered. It'll take you straight to 1994).

Pides are like pizza canoes stuffed with savory fillings. Making them will take some time because the dough takes longer to knead than regular pizza dough. Enlist help, and divide up tasks. Someone can prep the fillings, while someone else makes the dough. Karl made the dough, and I prepped two stuffings: feta and dill, and eggplant. The recipes below have been adapted from a fantastic Turkish cookbook, Ayla Algar's Classical Turkish Cooking.

With so many fast-foodish Turkish owned restaurants in Belgium, I wish real Turkish food was as widely available as the fast-foodified kebabs and durums. Mostly, I wish they had pide's available everywhere. So utterly good.

Pide dough - Yield: 8 individual pides

Ingredients

4 tsp yeast

½ tsp sugar

½ cup warm water

½ cup all-purpose flour

3 and ½ cups flour (bread flour if you have it)

1 tsp salt

3 tbsp olive oil

1 cup water

1 egg beaten (for egg wash)

Directions:

1. You'll make a sponge out of the first 4 ingredients. Combine the yeast, sugar, and warm water in a large bowl. This should eventually bubble or look scummy (the yeast is active). Stir in the flour, cover the mixture, and let it rise in a warm location (such as your oven) for 30 minutes.
2. Put the flour in a large bowl. Make a well in the middle, and pour in the sponge, salt, olive oil, and the warm water. Gradually stir in the flour until it gets shaggy. It will be heavy. Turn it out onto a floured surface and knead it for 15 minutes. The dough will be slightly damp and very heavy. Put the dough in a lightly oiled bowl, cover, and let rise 1 hour.
3. Once ready, turn the dough out on a lightly floured surface. Roll it into a log and divide it into 8 pieces. Roll these into balls, and set them on a lightly floured surface. Cover with a damp towel and let rest at least 30 minutes. Preheat the oven to it's hottest setting. If you have a pizza stone, stick it in the oven while it preheats.
4. To prepare the pide, roll each ball into an oval (~6” by 12”). A slight dusting of flour will keep it from sticking. Put 2-3 tbsp of the stuffing in the middle and spread it out leaving a half-inch border.
5. Fold the layers lengthwise slightly over the filling. The layers may overlap. You'll have smaller points on the end. You can pinch them together or flatten them to finish the canoe. If desired, brush them carefully with some eggwash.
6. Carefully lay the pides on the hot stone; with a round-12” pizza stone, 2 pides were able to get cooked at a time. Cook until golden, 10-15 minutes.

Rolling out the pide dough (above)

Pide with eggplant filling

Feta and Dill filling

Yield: Enough stuffing for 4 individual pide. Double recipe if you want to use one stuffing.

Ingredients:

8 oz feta cheese (or 200 g, which is more like 7 ounces)

1 egg lightly beaten

2 tbsp butter

1/3 cup fresh dill, chopped (I used parsley instead)

Directions:

1. Mix all the ingredients together and set aside.

Eggplant filling

Yield: Enough stuffing for 4 individual pide. Double recipe if you want to use one stuffing. Filling can be prepared ahead of time.

Ingredients:

2 medium eggplants, about 1 lb (use 3-4 Japanese ones, or 2 medium globe eggplants)

salt

2 tbsp olive oil

½ cup tomatoes, chopped

1 bell pepper chopped, any variety of peppers will do

1 chili chopped, seeded and de-veined

2 cloves garlic, chopped

½ tsp red chili flakes

½ cup parsley, chopped

½ cup cilantro or basil, chopped

Directions:

1. Wash and slice eggplant lengthwise and then cut it into thin slices. Salt the slices generously and set in a colander to drain for an hour. Rinse the eggplant to remove the salt, and then squeeze the eggplant dry.
2. Heat up olive oil over medium-high heat, add the eggplant and cook until golden. Once golden, remove from pan and set aside. Chop them when cool enough to handle.
3. Add the tomatoes, peppers and chilies to the pan. Cook 5 minutes. Stir in eggplant and garlic, heat through. Add in red pepper flakes, herbs, and adjust for salt. 

Spinach Veggie Burgers

Quick update: the spinach veggie burgers were talked about for at least several days after the first batch, so they were made again. This makes it on the list of faves for future lists of weekly meals. Nico, this time around, I got some pics. 



Served alongside some garlic-chive mashed potatoes



Spinach Veggie Burgers



Patties ready to hit the frying pan. The extra oil helps the patties not stick to the pan.



Yum





Karl, the ever discerning food critic, made the following statements after a few bites of these spinach veggie burgers:

OMFG! These are ridiculous!

What is in these? Ice cream?!

These could win over a meat addict.

To me, these tasted like spanakopita veggie patties - all the yum of spanakopita, without all the work.  I was excited to try these when I saw them on Kate's Mainly Veggie blog.  I found myself nodding in agreement with her love for spinach and feta and how they were meant to be together.  I enjoyed these because they have everything that I would want in a veggie burger: texture that is more like vegetables and less like meat, a hearty patty that is packed with flavor, but doesn't dry out when cooked, a patty that can stand alone, or get served on a bun.
These turned out awesome.  Below, I have written out my version of the recipe with ingredients I had or could find easily here. I threw together some breadcrumbs to mimic stuffing, so I have incorporated the spices below.  I really liked the way the fresh spinach turned out.


Ingredients:
Yield: 4 large patties, or 6-8 medium ones. 
1 large bag fresh spinach (baby spinach is fine), washed and drained OR 1 10 oz package frozen spinach, thawed.
1/4 cup plus 2 tbsp olive oil
2 slices hearty whole-grain bread, cut into 1 cm chunks, plus
1/2 cup panko bread crumbs (you can use 1 cup herb-seasoned stuffing instead) see note below
1/2 tsp salt
1 tbsp green zatar (optional)
1 tsp dried onion flakes
1/2 tsp garlic powder
1 tsp dill
1 tsp oregano
2 eggs, lightly beaten
1/2 cup to 3/4 cup feta cheese, crumbled
fresh pepper
1/4 cup flour (optional)
Note: the breadcrumbs plus Panko should total 1 and 1/2 cups


Directions:
1. Preheat broiler.
2. Place the bread crumbs plus Panko in an oven-safe pan. Mix in the salt, green zatar, onion flakes, garlic powder, dill and oregano.  Stir to combine and set under broiler until lightly toasted and dried out (about 5-10 minutes).  Watch carefully to avoid burning. 
3. Wash the spinach and set in a large colander to drain. 
4. Heat up a nonstick skillet over medium-high heat. Once hot, add in spinach (you may need to do this in batches). Cook the spinach until wilted, and most of the water has evaporated.
5. Remove the cooked spinach, allowing it to drain in a colander. Once cool, squeeze out extra water.
6. In a large mixing bowl, add in 1/4 cup olive oil, breadcrumbs, spinach, eggs, and feta. Top with fresh cracked black pepper.  Stir to combine everything. If the mixture is too dry, you can add in extra breadcrumbs. The right consistency is when you can make a patty without it falling apart.
7. Heat up the remaining 2 tbsp of olive oil in a non-stick skillet over medium-high heat.
8. Carefully, place the patties in the pan and cook 3-5 minutes per side.


Serve immediately.