Hello, hello!
I haven’t done a post yet this week as I’ve got a horrible chest infection but the drugs are starting to help and I’m feeling okay so I’m gonna write up a few things that I made last week when I had a few people ’round.
We’ve got cheese and silverbeet rolls, great green salad, and maple syrup baked parsnips – a vegetarian feast. The sides get to have their own posts because, as an ex long-term vegetarian, I tend to believe that all the bits are special in themselves and not just there because one has to eat one’s vegetables. Others are free to disagree.
So, silverbeet rolls.
These are adapted from the lovely Gourmet Girlfriend’s Spinach and Cheese Sausage Rolls. I used Silverbeet (it’s actually rainbow chard but I prefer a one word to a two word descriptor and they’re the same thing anyway) because I’ve got heaps in the garden at the moment and I replaced the grated cheese with ricotta because I’m just a sucker for ricotta. Oh and I chucked in half an onion, fried, because I had half and onion sitting around.
Cheese and Silverbeet Rolls
300g silverbeet (leaves only)
200g ricotta
200g feta, crumbled
2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
½ onion, diced
2-3 Silverbeet stalks, diced
¼ cup flour (I used half plain half buckwheat for no particular reason)
2 eggs (reserve a little for a glaze)
Salt & Pepper
3 sheets puff pastry
Take the pastry out of the freezer. Pat yourself on the back, now you won’t be dancing around the kitchen waiting for the pastry to defrost enough to be able to slide that large knife you’re holding between the sheets and prise them apart.
Pre-heat the oven to 200°.
Fry off the onion and silverbeet stalks with some olive oil until soft – 5ish minutes over a low to moderate heat. Put aside to cool a little.
Steam (or boil if you have to) the silverbeet leaves for a couple of minutes, until well wilted but still extremely green. Run under cold water to stop them cooking then squeeze dry. You can really squeeze hard here.*
Grab your pastry. Cut the squares in half vertically (or horizontally – doesn’t matter, they’re squares) so that you have two rectangles. Using a spoon, place the mixture along the long edge and roll the pastry in the same direction so that you have a long thin log. The pastry should overlap a little at the bottom. Cut log into four. Place the rolls seam side down on a baking tray covered with baking paper. Continue with the rest of the mixture.
Using a pastry brush and the rest of your egg, brush the tops of the rolls for a glaze. I also put poppy seeds on the top of mine but this ins’t necessary. To be honest neither is the glaze, but it looks great.
put in the oven for 25-30 minutes. So. Good.
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* The reason you cook the leaves before they go into the pastry is mostly to stop shrinkage. The leaves shrink a lot as they cook (even more so if you use spinach) and if you put them in a mix raw in a pastry like this then they shrink as it cooks and pull the mixture away from the sides so you end up with a space between the mixture and the pastry. If you follow the Gourmet Girlfriend’s recipe, which uses frozen spinach, you don’t have to worry about this step as frozen spinach is already cooked.