Spinach & Feta Quiche

Let's talk comfort food, shall we? Growing up my favorite family meals were things like Chicken and Dumplings (which my dad so lovingly called "chicken and glue"), Enchiladas de Creme, and homemade Quiche Lorraine complete with bacon. That's right, bacon. It's safe to say things have changed quite a bit since then, and since going vegetarian my comfort meals have began looking quite different. Instead of chicken and beef we eat beans (so. many. beans.), squash, pasta, and roasted vegetables. These things have become my comfort foods. 

I hadn't made my mom's quiche recipe in months when my man and I visited Prague last year on a trip to Europe. I know what you're thinking, "Prague is the home of goulash, bratwurst, and red meat galore". You're right. But it also happened to be home to the cutest little "Prague's first smoke-free" cafe with the best quiche I've ever had (sorry mom, you lost me at the bacon, no hurt feelings). What made this quiche so special was the perfect blend of creamy delicious spinach and the salty bite of feta, with really just a touch of eggs and milk. It was strangely reminiscent of spanakopita. I knew after one bite I had to recreate it.

Since coming home I've probably attempted it close to a dozen times, even serving it as a side for Thanksgiving last year, but never getting the proportions just perfect. Until now. Unlike traditional quiche, made with about 75% egg and a combination of milk and cream and about 25% vegetables and meat, in this quiche those proportions are swapped. And from a girl who considers bright green cooked spinach to be one of the most comforting foods in the world, this spinach-packed quiche is comfort food at it's finest. It's still got two eggs, a nice helping of mozzarella, feta, and freshly grated parmigiano reggiano but it's got a whopping 1.5 pound of spinach. That's right. Popeye would be proud. Oh and did I mention the homemade crust? Yeah, I'm not going to lie, there's a stick of butter in it, which I stand whole-heartedly behind. 

This spinach and feta quiche was made for cool fall evenings and is meant to be savored at a table surrounded by people you love. The entire pie doesn't usually make it more than 24 hours in our house before it's devoured. I suppose the fact that quiche makes a perfectly acceptable breakfast, lunch or dinner has something to do with it. This dish tastes like home. It reminds me of high school dinners, coming downstairs to eat with the family for a much-needed study break. But it also reminds me of the look on my husband's face when he comes home from work and I tell him I have quiche in the oven. I think we could all use a little more of that this time of year. 

Spinach Prague Quiche 
Makes one 9-inch round quiche
Inspired by mom & café kafíčko

For the crust (from The Art & Soul of Baking): 
1 1/4 cup all purpose flour 
1/2 cup unsalted butter 
1/4 tsp sea salt 
3-4 tbsp cold water 

For the filling: 
1.5 pounds frozen spinach 
2 green onions, diced
1/2 cup grated mozzarella
6 oz crumbled feta 
1/4 cup grated parmigiano reggiano, plus more for topping 
1 tbsp all purpose flour 
1/2 cup whole milk 
1/2 cup heavy cream 
2 large eggs 
1/2 tsp salt 
freshly ground pepper   

Cut your butter into 1/2 inch pieces and freeze for 20-30 minutes. Meanwhile, place flour and salt into a food processor and pulse until combined. Then add butter pieces and pulse until the dough looks like chunky sand with big bits of butter. Add water, 1-2 tbsp at a time, and pulse. You'll know when your dough is ready when you squeeze a small amount of it in your hand and it forms a cohesive ball. If you do this and it falls apart, add more water and continue to pulse. Transfer dough to a large piece of plastic wrap and press it together to combine into a disc. Knead the dough one to two times, then cover completely in plastic wrap and refrigerate for 30 minutes. 

Bring a large pot of water to a boil and cook your frozen spinach for 2-4 minutes, until bright green. Transfer to a fine mesh strainer and press all the water from the spinach. Combine spinach, green onions, cheeses, and flour. In a separate bowl, combine milk, cream, eggs, salt & pepper. 

Transfer the dough to a lightly floured work surface and roll the dough out to fit your pie dish, then transfer to dish. If your dough gets too warm and butter chunks begin to melt, (mine did), pop it back in the fridge for 5-10 minutes. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. 

Top the pie crust with the spinach & cheese mixture, then pour milk and egg mixture over the spinach. Using a fork, or your hand, gently massage the spinach with the egg mixture until loosely combined. Top with freshly grated parmesan then cook for about 1 hour until a toothpick comes out clean and the feta bits begin to brown just slightly. 

Fresh Goat Cheese Ravioli with Heirloom Tomato Carpaccio in Brown Butter Sage Sauce

We all knew it was only a matter of time until we got some fresh homemade pasta up in here. The time has come, people, get excited. 

To start, let's rewind a bit and go back to my first homemade pasta experience. Believe it or not, back in college, I was a horrible cook. The first time I ever cooked for my husband, and he tells this story all the time, I sprayed a pyrex baking dish with pam then filled it with a NO BAKE boxed peanut butter cup dessert. The pam soaked real nicely into the packaged cookie crust and it was my life's biggest disgrace. Years later, my roommate and I had a freezer stocked full of frozen food and most of what I knew how to cook was some variation on cheese and carbs. Thank god, I've grown up a lot since then. Here's to never looking back! 

Within the year after graduating college, my good friend hosted a pasta making class for her birthday. She had her friend, who had recently graduated culinary school, come and teach us to cook. At the time, I didn't have the slightest clue of how the heck pasta is made. I just thought it comes dried in a package. So when our instructor showed up with a pound of all purpose flour and a carton of eggs, I was a bit skeptical. How are we going to make pasta from that? I thought. 

What I experienced in the next two hours I'm pretty sure changed my life forever. I'm seriously getting a rush of excitement just writing this! Not only did mixing the dough by hand and running the sheets through the machine make me feel like a child again, it honestly felt like magic. I almost couldn't believe my eyes watching the fresh sheets roll through the machine and come out the other side as pillowy, soft, fresh strands of angel hair pasta. Not only was it magical, it was empowering! We started with a bag of flour and a carton of eggs and we created this! We're incredible! As if the experience wasn't magic enough, once everything was finished we got to eat the stuff. For those of you who have yet to experience fresh pasta, it tastes very different from dried - it's softer, lighter, and more delicate. Really a treat in and of it self. 

Months later, I got engaged, uprooted my life in New York and moved to California to be with my man. I was unemployed, broke, and struggling to figure out what I was doing with my life. And one day, after one too many craigslist job ads, I marched my sorry ass to Sur La Table and bought a pasta machine. Somehow I knew, that even though it wasn't going to solve my problems, taking this shiny new machine home and spending the entire afternoon making pasta by hand was exactly what I needed. And I was right.  In many ways I find the process very similar to my yoga practice. It's meditative, requires just the perfect amount of focus, care, and attention, and best of all it's just so damn joyful. 

Through the years I've learned a couple things about pasta making that I must pass on. Here they are: 

1. Don't stress. It's just pasta. It can be a bit stressful handling the long sheets and trying to get it just perfect. But you have to remember it's just pasta. And the experience is supposed to be enjoyable. Also, I had the opportunity of watching Italians make pasta at a factory in Florence once and they man-handle the stuff with such confidence, absolutely no timidity there. 
2. Do not, I repeat, do not make pasta the day of a dinner party. If you're like me, and have a bad habit of taking on way too much, especially when given the opportunity to cook for others, know this is not the time. Make them in advance, the day before, that way if things go wrong (which they can) you can have time to make a back-up plan. I say all of this entirely from experience. 
3. Make pasta on a day you have nothing else to do. It's not a project that likes a time limit. And giving it a time limit will only take away from the joy of it and add stress. You don't want to be rushed, because it can take a while to get the hang of it, and projects like this always take longer than expected. 
4. Be patient with yourself. I have messed up so many times. Like really badly messed up and had to start completely over. There is a learning curve and a lot of trial and error. Be patient & see tip #1. 
5. Find a good Pandora station, and have fun. The truth is, you could probably drive somewhere and have pasta made for you. But making your own is just as much about the process as it is about the final product. Both should be enjoyed. 

Which brings me to this dish. It is Summer meets Fall on a plate and it's a recreation from a fantastic dish I had a couple months ago at The Villa, a lovely little restaurant in Woodland Hills. I went with goat cheese and a little lemon zest for the filling, instead of traditional ricotta, to lighten things up. The fresh ravioli are laid over a bed of thick slabs of orange, purple, and yellow heirloom tomatoes, fresh, raw and dressed in nothing but olive oil, salt, and pepper. (The restaurant menu calls them tomato carpaccio, a word I'd only ever heard when referring to meat. Confused, I asked our waiter, who then went on to describe them as "tomato steaks" which pretty much sold me on them right then and there.) Finally, a warm brown butter sage sauce is poured over the whole thing. The freshness from the tomatoes and the deep rich flavors of brown butter and crispy sage are a match made in heaven. In fact, I found myself obsessing over the combination of the two so much that if you're not into the effort you can skip the ravioli all together and just serve tomatoes in brown butter sage and it would be divine. 

Fresh Goat Cheese Ravioli with Heirloom Tomato Carpaccio in Brown Butter Sage Sauce 
Inspired by The Villa 
Serves 4 as a main (48 small ravioli) 

For the dough: 
200 grams All Purpose Flour
200 grams Semolina Flour 
1/2 tsp sea salt 
4 eggs, room temperature, (plus 1 for an egg wash) 
1 tbsp olive oil (optional) 

For the filling:
2 garlic cloves
8oz goat cheese
8 oz ricotta
1/2 tsp sea salt
pepper to taste
zest of 1 medium lemon 

For the sauce: 
1/2 cup unsalted butter (1 stick)
1 bunch fresh sage 
1 tbsp lemon juice 
parmigiano-reggiano, freshly grated, to garnish 

For the tomato steaks: 
3 large heirloom tomatoes, preferably in different colours 
extra virgin olive oil 
salt & pepper to taste 

Make the dough. In a food processor (if you don't have one, follow the well method here) pulse both flours with salt until combined. Add in eggs and pulse until mixture begins to combine, then add olive oil and continue to pulse until a dough ball forms. Remove from food processor and knead on a lightly floured surface 5-10 times. Wrap in plastic wrap and refrigerate for 30 minutes. 

Make the filling. Add garlic to a food processor and pulse until finely chopped. Add goat cheese and ricotta and blend until smooth and creamy. Add salt, pepper, and lemon zest and blend until completely smooth, adjust to taste. Refrigerate.

Make the ravioli. Line a large baking sheet with parchment. Heavily flour your ravioli maker with all purpose flour, and your parchment paper with semolina flour. Work with 1/4 of the pasta dough at a time, leaving the remainder in the refrigerator. Press dough into a flat disk. Crank the dough through the thickest setting of your pasta maker. Continue to crank the dough through, each time adjusting the settings thinner and lightly flouring the sheets with all purpose flour when they become tacky, until your sheets are about size 7 (see notes). Halfway through, cut your pasta sheet in half (one will be the bottom ravioli layer, the other will be the top). Lay 1 sheet over your ravioli maker and gently press down on the center of each ravioli to stretch the dough. Place about 1 tbsp of filling inside each ravioli. Using a brush, paint egg wash in between ravioli (it serves as glue) then add the top pasta sheet. Press down between each ravioli using a rolling pin/your hand. Cut excess dough from the sides of the ravioli maker and return the the refrigerator. Carefully remove each ravioli and place on baking sheet, being sure the ravioli do not touch because they will stick together and never let go. Continue until dough and filling are gone. 

Heat a stockpot with salted water and bring to a bowl. Meanwhile, make the sauce. Add butter to a saute pan over medium heat. As the butter heats, white bubbles will form. When the butter has stops bubbling and brown bits begin to form, add sage leaves and continue to stir until butter becomes a light carmel color with many brown bits and leaves are slightly crispy. Add in lemon juice and remove from heat immediately, brown butter turns to burnt butter quickly. 

Cut tomatoes into about 1/3 inch thick slabs and drizzle with olive oil, salt, and pepper and line on plates or a serving platter. When water is at a gentle boil, add 5-10 ravioli at a time and cook for 3-4 minutes. Top tomatoes with cooked ravioli, and drizzle with brown butter sage. Top with fresh parmesan and serve. 

Special equipment: 

• Kitchen Scale - I got away with a cheap $5 one for years before upgrading to a digital
• Pasta Machine - I have this one. 
• Ravioli Maker or Ravioli Stamp (I have this one and this one) 

Notes: 

• Different pasta machines have different settings. For mine size 7 is the second to thinnest setting. 
• This recipe calls for enough dough that you don't need to worry about salvaging the scraps. 
• If you find that the dough snaps back at you and isn't easily malleable when you're working with it, give it a time-out in the fridge. I'm pretty sure this has something to do with the gluten content, and it's solved by refrigerating for a couple minutes.  

Crispy Coconut Eggplant with Avocado Mango Salsa

If you're like me and the rest of the world, the week after a long weekend can be rough. Especially when said long weekend marks the end of summer and the beginning of fall and all the get-it-togetherness that fall seems to call for. You see, I'm applying to grad school for next fall and application deadlines are now suddenly approaching. And I don't know why but just admitting it to the world seems so terrifying. Sometimes I wish I was the person I was 5 years ago, she was braver, less worried about money and consequences and failure, less realistic, but oh so bold and fearless. She wouldn't have been afraid. So in channeling my former self, I admit I'm applying to grad school. MSW and PsyD. programs to pursue a career that allows me to work in mental health, and more specifically which allows me to incorporate the yoga, breath, and meditation practices, which so dramatically heal me over and over again, with that population. 

But despite this ever-present goal, the fear of failing, of not getting in, of getting in and then changing my mind, of choosing the wrong program, of not being able to get a job, or of accruing an unmanageable amount debt seem to cloud my enthusiasm. And don't even get me started on the GRE, or I'm going to go into the other room and seek refuse in child's pose. Deep breaths. 

So for now, I hide in crispy coconut eggplant with homemade avocado mango salsa. I can handle that. And somehow the smell of freshly grated parmesan and earthy almond meal sizzling amongst a warm bed of coconut oil seems to ease all my worries. I've made this recipe a dozen times, and that smell get me every time. This dish is like eggplant parm's healthy tropical sister. Much lighter than the classic, with no carbs if you're into that sort of thing, and plenty of protein thanks to the almond meal. And the salsa is fresh and tastes like Hawaii meets Italy. It makes the perfect appetizer or light dinner. 

Crispy Coconut Eggplant with Avocado Mango Salsa 

Adapted from A Tasty Love Story
Serves 4-6 as an appetizer or 2 as a main 

1 large eggplant
1/2 cup almond meal
1/2 cup freshly grated Parmigiano Reggiano
1 garlic clove, minced
1 egg
1/2 cup coconut oil

For the salsa:
3-4 shallots
1 roma tomato
1 ripe mango
1 large avocado
1/4 teaspoon salt
1.5 tbsp lemon juice
1 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
small handful of basil 

Remove the skin of the eggplant with a vegetable peeler. Using a mandoline or very sharp knife, cut the eggplant into 1/4 inch slices. Lay the eggplant over paper towels and cover both sides with a think layer of salt. Let sit for 1 hour. 

Meanwhile, make the salsa. Dice shallots, tomato (seeds removed), and mango and combine in a bowl. Add salt, lemon juice, and olive oil, and mix. Dice avocado, and gently (as not to make guacamole), fold into the salsa. 

Heat a cast iron skillet over medium heat. Run eggplant slices over water to remove salt and pat dry with a towel. Set aside. Combine almond meal, parmesan, and garlic in a deep dish. In a separate dish whisk egg with a large pinch of salt. Coat each eggplant slice with egg, allowing excess to run off, followed by the almond meal mixture. Depending on the size of your eggplant, if/when you run out of egg or almond meal mixture just replace with more. Spoon 1-2 tablespoons of coconut oil into hot skillet, just enough to thinly coat the bottom of your skillet, and cook eggplant slices 2-3 minutes per side, or until lightly browned and crispy. When finished cooking, allow eggplants to rest over paper towels to absorb excess oil. 

To serve, place a large spoonful of salsa atop one eggplant slice, followed by another eggplant slice and more salsa. Top with thinly sliced basil leaves. 

Notes:

• You can salt and dry your eggplant slices and store in the fridge between sheets of paper towels for 3-5 days, if you're into planning ahead, or only making a few at a time. 
• These reheat well best in the oven (or toaster oven). Don't reheat in the microwave. 
• The salsa stays fresh, and the avocado green for 3-5 days thanks to the lemon juice. If you have extra it's great with chips or on quesadillas.