Grilled Pastrami Sandwich

I only had a little bit of time for lunch and had some wonderful Black Forest rye bread & turkey pastrami. I almost made a grilled cheese sandwich for my son the other day - so why not grill this?

• your favorite bread
• pastrami - regular or turkey
  
• Swiss cheese
• spinach
• butter

Fry the pastrami before assembling the sandwich if you want a great bacony flavor. Place cheese on both halves of the sandwich so that when they melt, they will hold the spinach and pastrami in place. Add the spinach and pastrami, close the sandwich and butter the top and bottom of the sandwich. Place in a pan over medium heat. Cook both sides until toasty and the cheese has melted.

I loved this sandwich! It tasted very much like a non-sour reuben.

Spinach Stuffed Chicken Breasts

There has been a constant sale on boneless, skinless chicken breasts lately, and the champagne chicken was such a success; I decided to try another stuffed chicken breast. Since I had fresh spinach, I decided to use that. I looked at a couple of spinach stuffed chicken breast recipes and created the following.

• 1 lb boneless, skinless chicken breasts
• 1 to 1-1/2 cup chopped spinach
• 3-4 sliced garlic cloves
• 1/2 cup French onion dip (because I had some and thought onion would go well with this) or sour cream for milder flavor or even cream cheese for creamier filling
  
• 1/4 cup cheese (I was going to use colby jack, but used pepper jack instead)
• sea salt and pepper
• olive oil

Mix the chopped spinach, sliced garlic and French onion dip until the spinach is completely coated and the garlic is evenly distributed.

Butterfly the chicken breasts and stuff the filling into the chicken. Top the filling with cheese.

Fold the chicken back up and sprinkle with salt, pepper and oil.

Bake in the oven at 400F for 1/2 hour, or pan fry over medium heat until completely cooked.

This was a very tender, flavorful chicken breast. I definitely want to try this with just sour cream or cream cheese to allow the spinach flavors to show through better. But with the French onion dip the spinach tasted very much like artichoke, which was nice.

My family loved this. I would make it again. It was easy! This can even be made up ahead and stored in the refrigerator until ready to cook.

Spinach Pesto Quiche

There was a sale on eggs and I suddenly had the flavor of fluffy eggs, bacon and basil with a light, buttery pastry in my mouth.

QUICHE!!

I have only made quiche once; and although it wasn't terrible, it wasn't the best.
But this time, it was AWESOME!!!

The Pastry
Start with the pastry. It is very important that the butter be cold and that you do not over mix. The thing that makes the pastry flaky is the tiny bits of un-mixed butter melting and expanding, leaving air pockets.

• 1 cup flour
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1 stick COLD butter
• 1 egg yolk
• 2 tbs ICE COLD water
  

Mix the salt and flour well. Cut the butter into the flour until just crumbly. Whisk the egg yolk and water and mix lightly into the flour mix. DO NOT OVER-MIX! Just mix it until everything is incorporated. Some recipes will have you roll it out at this point, but then you risk over-working the dough. I just pushed it into the bottom of the pan in which I was baking the quiche until it was evenly distributed across the bottom and sides.

Bake it slightly at 425F before putting in the filling.

The Filling

• 4 eggs
• 2 cups light cream (the only cream that I had was half-and-half singles - the kind that you use for coffee. 48 of them equals 2 cups :)
  
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/2 cup cheese (usually, you would use Swiss - for this I used my four Italian cheese mix)
• 2-3 tablespoons minced sweet onion
• 1-2 tablespoon minced garlic
  
• 1 cup chopped, raw spinach (I probably used more than this)
  
• 1/2 cup chopped fresh basil (and I probably used more than this too)
• 1/4 cup pine nuts
• 1/4-1/2 cup sliced mushrooms
  
• Pinch of cayenne pepper
  

Saute the onion, garlic and pine nuts. Whip the eggs and cream. Mix in all other ingredients, as well as the sauteed ingredients. Pour into the lightly browned pastry crust and bake in a 425F oven for 15 minutes. Lower the heat to 350F and bake for another 30 - 45 minutes until a knife comes out clean.

This was even great as left overs!

Traditional Manicotti

I got this recipe from the 1000 Vegetarian Recipe book. I'm telling you, I LOVE that book!!

2 heaping cups of cottage cheese (it was supposed to be ricotta, but I had to substitute cottage cheese + romano)
1/4 cup Romano (see, I told you)
3/4 a package of frozen spinach
1 cup chopped mixed sweet peppers
3 chopped scallions.

This is what it looks like all mixed up. I also added some salt and pepper.

This recipe is actually called "Traditional Canelloni" in the book, but I didn't have canelloni, I had manicotti. Hey, it's all just pasta.

Cook the pasta most of the way. Drain and run cold water over it to cool it down enough to handle it, because you have to stuff them.

The book showed someone using a spoon to stuff the pasta, but good luck with that. I used my hands. We evolved them for a reason, you know.

Here is Neo asking if he can have some yet. Doesn't it look like you could just stuff him in one of the manicotti?

Awe! What a cutie!!

But NO!! You can't have any!

Put the stuffed pasta in a grease baking dish. Pour pasta sauce over the top. I made my own with tomatoes I canned from my own garden, but you can use what you want. The sauce should just about cover the pasta.

Sprinkle romano and parmesan on top and cook in for 30-40 minutes at 375 F; or until the pasta is completely cooked and the cheese on top is browned.
Mine didn't quite make it to the browned stage since my son kept hounding me about when it would be done.

Like every five minutes!!

It was pretty good. Well, I'll say it has great potential. I would definitely try this again, with a couple of changes...

Changes I would make:
* Cook it longer.
* Use thicker sauce. I did not spend a lot of time making sure the sauce was right before I used it and I added extra water to it because I didn't have enough to cover the pasta sufficiently.
* MORE CHEESE!!! Hey, I'm from Wisconsin! Maybe a little mozzarella grated on top. Yummy!!

Easy Veggie Lasagna

Lasagna was always one of the three dishes that my mother made that were not only edible, but were the best I ever tasted. I hardly ever make it because it seems so difficult. As I was thinking of possible zucchini recipes though, I thought that lasagna would be a perfect try.

• 10 lasagna noodles
• 12 oz cottage cheese
• 7 oz ricotta
• handful Parmesan cheese
• handfull Romano cheese
• 3-5 oz spinach, fresh or frozen
• 2 eggs
• 2-4 cloves garlic
• 6 tomatoes
• 3-4 TBS Italian seasoning
• 2 cup sliced mushrooms
• 8-10 oz shredded mozzarella
  
• 1 med zucchini
• Salt - garlic or sea salt
  

As I boiled 10 lasagna noodles in oiled and salted water, I mixed 12 ounces of cottage cheese, 7 ounces ricotta, a handful of Parmesan, and a handful of Romano in a large bowl. Add 3-5 ounces of spinach. I used frozen (squeeze it dry) but I think that I would use fresh next time since I wasn't impressed with the flavor of the frozen spinach. Mix in two eggs and set this aside. Preheat the oven at 350 degrees.

Heat a pan with some olive oil, one or two tablespoons. Chop up a couple cloves of garlic. Add to the hot pan- you do not want the pan so hot that the garlic turns brown, just enough to cook it. Dice six or so tomatoes. Add those to the pan. Add three or four tablespoons of Italian seasoning and a good sprinkling of garlic salt (or other salt. Sea salt? You know how much I like sea salt, mmmm...).

As the sauce cooks down, slice up a medium size zucchini into 1/8-1/4 inch slices. If you like mushrooms you can slice some (I used portabella since I had some leftover). Remove the noodles from the heat even if they are not cooked all the way (in fact you probably only want them cooked halfway). Rinse them under cold water and separate.

When the sauce is thick, spread some of it in an oiled cake or lasagna pan. Put in a layer of noodles, then a layer of cheese mix, then noodles, then a layer of the raw zucchini slices and the mushrooms (if you are using them) topped with tomato sauce, another layer of noodles, the rest of the cheese mix, a layer of noodles, and top with the remainder of the tomato sauce. Top the whole thing with grated mozarella.

Bake in the oven for about an hour. My husband is not a big vegetable fan, but he liked this. He even ate leftovers- that's rare. I made mine half with mushrooms and half without (my husband doesn't like mushrooms). My son ate until the mushroom side was completely gone.