Spinach Rice Pie

This is a reworking of my Hunza Pie recipe from years ago, but I realised that I don't have the updated gluten-free version anywhere handy to share with friends, so here it is. This is a fabulous recipe for when you come home from the local farmers' markets with a bunch of the green leaves du jour and no idea what to do with them, since the "spinach" of the title is highly customisable. I usually start with a bunch of rainbow chard and add whatever else I have in the fridge or garden - kale, most Asian greens, mustard greens, etc. If you haven't made it to the farmers' markets lately or, like this week, you find all the local kale has gone to seed in the recent mini-heatwave, you can even make it with frozen spinach and grated zucchini to fill out the chard. Hunza Pie is traditionally made with brown rice, but I use white rice these days as brown does not agree with me.

Ingredients:

at least 2 tbsp butter2 red onions, sliced thinly
1/2-1 tbsp balsamic vinegar
1 bunch silverbeet/rainbow chard, shredded
1 bunch other greens (or equivalent in frozen spinach/grated zucchini)
1 cup (dry weight) rice, cooked
1 cup grated cheese (opt)
6 eggs
1/4-1/2 cup cream or sour cream (or milk)
1/2 tsp dried oregano
salt and pepper

Melt one tbsp of butter in a large pan over a low heat and slowly caramelise the onions, stirring occasionally to stop them sticking. Add the balsamic vinegar after about 20 minutes and continue to gently cook down for another ten minutes or so. When the onions look and smell amazing, add the rest of the butter and start adding the greens (you may have to do this in batches depending on the size of your pan, adding more as the first wilts). While the greens are cooking down, heat the oven to 180C. When all of the greens have wilted and started to change colour, stir in the rice, and transfer the mixture to a pie dish (I used to add cheese to this, but these days I don't bother and it's still amazing. But if you want, you can add a cup of grated cheese at this point).

Whisk together the eggs and cream, sour cream or milk (I have no idea of quantities here as I usually eyeball it relative to the amount of filling). Add oregano and season with salt and pepper, pour over the filling. Bake for around 30 minutes or until top is golden and centre is firm.

Hey ho, another change

This blog has become pretty erratic. I blame the acquisition of a life. This cottage farming bizzo dramatically lessens the allotment of sitting-on-arse-blogging time, who knew?

Anyway, latest news on the farm front is that we have a house cow. The two pigs we acquired a couple of months ago are not immediately contributing to the food supply, but the cow is another matter! So in the immediate future, this blog will probably move towards chronicling my attempt to find more lower-carb vegetarian dairy recipes. Lower-carb meaning not containing pasta, potatoes, rice or flour, which is a big ask in itself, and vegetarian because the point is to replace other sources of protein with our own produce. Meeting both of these requirements is actually quite tricky, especially since it will be a while until we can start incorporating any cheeses which require ageing. But since we can now provide pretty much all of our own yoghurt, butter, cream, sour cream and milk as well as paneer, haloumi, mozzarella and ricotta, there are still quite a few options out there. I just need to find them (and remember to write them down here).

Housemate Dylan is the dairy queen, so I'm not going to be sharing much of the actual basic recipes for any of the above, more what I then do with them. And hopefully, it will be really cool to watch this blog become more of a chronicle of how much of our own produce we can live off, as the garden becomes more productive and we add more animals. I, for one, am really really looking forward to the day when our Saturday morning ritual of Eggs Benedict is made with our own butter, eggs and ham!

O Dumplings, glorious dumplings!

Time to revive this blog from its hibernation. After our epic holiday and 3000km drive to our new home (during which our camera met an Unfortunate End, so alas this blog will be returning to bland monochrome for the foreseeable future), we've settled in happily over the last week. Part of the process of making a house into a home for me always involves cooking, putting my the skill of my hands and heart into filling the house with familiar scents and energy. I've been experimenting with perfecting a bread recipe, kneaded in the bread machine to spare my RSI but baked in the oven, baking muffins and cakes, and taking advantage of the glorious bounty of fresh fruit and vegetables on every roadside farmstand.

While I might be waking the blog from a hibernation, the weather is definitely encouraging the reverse. Since we arrived in the Huon Valley, the weather has been rainy and autumnal, blessing us with sunshine, fogs and a multitude of rainbows, but over the last two days we've had a real taste of winter's blast on our hilltop. So tonight was definitely a night for a rich, warming winter soup of grains and root vegetables, topped with the glorious fluffy clouds of dumplings.

I love dumplings. They are not, as they are for my Beloved, a childhood comfort food - indeed I don't recall my mother ever making them when I was a kid - but I discovered them a few years ago in Sara Lewis' cookbook, Veggie Food For Kids. Since then, I've made them innumerable times and this particular recipe has never failed me. Tonight, however, I absentmindedly mixed up two recipes I had been reading, and made the dumplings with different proportions and added an egg. The dumplings attained gigantic, saucepan-dominating proportions with the larger quantities, and the addition of the egg seemed to make no particular difference, so I'm giving my usual recipe here instead.


Barley and Lentil Vegetable Soup with Dumplings

Soup
2 onions
2 cloves garlic
2 potatoes, diced (I used Dutch Cream, grown ten minutes up the road from here, and they were superb)
1 carrot, diced
1/2 sweet potato, diced
2 tbsp pearl barley
2 tbsp red lentils
2 tbsp Puy lentils
lots o' stock, or 2tsp stock powder and water
1/2 tsp each cumin and coriander
2 bay leaves
black pepper
1c frozen peas

Saute the onion until tender, add chopped garlic and fry until fragrant. Brown the root vegetables for five minutes or so for deeper flavour. Cover the vegetables generously with water or stock and add stock powder (if using) and other seasonings. Toss in the barley and legumes of your choice (I like the way that the red lentils cook down and thicken the soup and Puy lentils are just divine, but use whatever you have or prefer), bring to the boil, and simmer, covered, until vegetables are almost tender. Add the peas just before you're ready for the dumplings, but make sure the water comes back up to the boil before you add them.

Dumplings
200g plain flour (I use a mix of wholemeal and white, but it works with all wholemeal too)
2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp ground parmesan or 1/2c grated cheese
50g butter, diced
enough cold water to form a soft dough

In a food processor, whizz the flour, baking powder and cheese to make sure it is evenly mixed, then add the butter and process until it forms coarse crumbs (don't overprocess). Gradually add water and knead gently until it comes together into a sticky dough; try not to handle it too much or the butter melts and the whole thing goes horribly squoogey. Quickly form into a log, and cut into 12 equal pieces. Let your kids practise their ninja playdough rolling skills and make them into rough balls, then drop them into the gently boiling stew, evenly spaced out. Put the lid on and simmer for fifteen minutes or until light and fluffy - don't take the lid off if you can avoid it. They should double in size into gorgeous fluffy pillows of carbolicious goodness. Devour!

Random recipes

Made this recipe for sweet and sour dipping sauce tonight. We had DIY rice paper rolls (which would have been rather more successful if E and then B had not dropped the packet of wrappers!) for dinner.

I want to try this recipe for Green Tomato and Apple Chutney this week. I am requesting apples from the trees on the way to riding school tomorrow, so I don't have to experiment with expensive ones! *g* I do probably need to buy more brown sugar, vinegar and sultanas, though.

Collard Greens with Bacon

A new experiment from the Farmers' Market. I've read about collard greens for years without ever seeing them for sale, so of course I had to buy some to try. Googling for recipes brought up a number of common themes and some variations, so I zipped up to the shops for bacon, and ended up throwing this together as an accompaniment to fritatta.

1 bunch collard greens, stems removed and leaves shredded
1 small onion
1/3-1/2 cup bacon, diced
1-2 cloves of garlic, crushed
1 tsp apple cider vinegar
1 tsp brown sugar
1/2 tsp paprika

Saute the onion and bacon together until the onion is cooked. Add garlic and cook until fragrant. Add greens, vinegar, sugar and paprika and stir together, cover and sweat over a low heat until greens wilt and are just beginning to change colour (you want to keep them green). Serve as a side dish, and lament that there wasn't twice as much!

This quantity fed E and me, but next time I will buy two bunches as I probably ended up with about half the quantity of leafage as in the average supermarket bunch of English spinach (as a comparison).

Yum!

Tonight I flung together a meal which turned out to be amazingly yummy. Part of it was due to the specific ingredients - we bought new potatoes from the farmers' market last time we were there, and served them as simply as possible - boiled in their skins with butter, pepper and salt. They were utterly magnificent. Anyone who goes to the local farmers' market, you must buy potatoes from Glenn na Meala Farm. They are so delicious that they have even convinced the EDoD that she likes potatoes, an astonishing feat! They also have the advantage of being super local - the farm is only ten minutes drive away from our house :-) I also used eggs from our own chooks, and olive oil from another very local producer, but the rest of the ingredients were generic supermarket/greengrocer products and sourced from God knows where... *sigh*

Vegetable Fritters

1 onion, finely diced or grated
1 zucchini, grated
1 carrot, grated
salt
1 cup corn kernels
1 cup grated cheese
1 clove garlic, crushed or finely chopped
salt and black pepper to taste
2 large eggs
2-3 tbsp wholemeal flour
oil for shallow frying

Grate the vegetables into a colander, sprinkle with salt and leave til the juices release. Rinse and tip into a clean teatowel, squeeze until dry. Add corn kernels, grated cheese, and garlic and mix together. Stir through wholemeal flour til the vegetables are coated (add more if necessary). Beat eggs and seasoning together, bind mixture with egg, and put in the fridge for half an hour, unless your family is starving to death, in which case just be careful in turning them as they won't stick together as well. Shallow fry and serve hot.

Chickpea Couscous Salad

7-8 sun-dried tomatoes (not packed in oil), shredded
1/4 cup currants
1/2 cup frozen peas
2 tsp butter or margarine
1 cup couscous
1 cup boiling water
1 tin chickpeas, drained and rinsed
1 stick celery, thinly sliced
3 tbsp olive oil
1-2 tsp balsamic vinegar
salt and black pepper to taste

Combine tomatoes, currants, peas, butter or margarine and couscous in a lidded container with the boiling water. Stir quickly, cover and leave until water has been absorbed. Fluff with a fork, and microwave for 30 seconds or so if the couscous is still slightly soggy. Turn into a large serving bowl with celery and chickpeas. Beat olive oil and balsamic vinegar together then pour over couscous mixture and stir thoroughly. Season to taste.