Herself’s Recipes

Technically Florentine refers to dishes made in the Florentine, Italy style. These dishes include spinach and use a cream sauce. Over time that has shifted and it now usually refers to dishes with spinach and cheese. Rumor has it that Catherine de Medici brought the dish from Italy to the French court of Henry II in the mid 1550s.

This is a nice way to use up spinach or dress up some rice. I usually serve this dish with fish.

1 cup white rice

2 cups water

1 cup cooked spinach ( about 12 oz boiled )

1/4 cup Parmesan or other hard cheese, grated

1/2 white onion diced

1 Tablespoon butter

Take the rice, water and place in microwave for 15 minutes or so until water is evaporated.

In a small skillet brown the onion in the butter until clear.

Add spinach, cheese and cooked onions to your rice.

*If you try to save time by cooking the spinach with the rice, you will end up with green rice.

*If you add the spinach, cheese and onions to the rice before it is done you’ll loose some of the flavor. Wait and add them at the end.

Bolognese is a great way to use up leftover meats. I prefer to use leftover ribs and rib roast but any meat will do: duck, chicken, turkey, beef, pork… The richer the meat the richer your sauce will be.

In a crockpot mix:

6 oz tomato paste ( 1 can )
6 oz water
1 cup white wine
1 cup milk ( whole milk or cream is best )
30 oz diced tomatoes ( 2 cans )

diced carrots ( ~ 2 )
diced onion ( ~ 1 small to medium )
diced celery ( ~ 1 large )
3 oz diced pancetta ( bacon will work if you don’t have pancetta )

1 to 2 pounds leftover meat ( shredded is best, diced very small if that’s not possible ) If you use less meat you need to cook longer to reduce the sauce, if you use more you can cook it a little less time before it thickens.

Put the crockpot on its lowest setting ( keep warm on some newer pots ) and cook uncovered for about 8 hours. You want the sauce to thicken up like a sloppy joe or chili mixture.

More traditional sauces use about half as much tomato paste as I have in this recipe and eliminate the garlic. Some people also add mushrooms. You’ll want to experiment and find what suits you best.

Bolognese sauces are also known as ragu sauces. The history of bolognese sauce is not clear. It was served in wealthy courts to noble families in the 1500s. The word ragu comes from the 18th century French word ragout. Bologna is supposed to be the city of origin. Beyond that not much is known.

I love quiche. It is a quick easy side dish or meal and a great way to use up all the leftover vegetables and bits of cheese in your refrigerator.

We went to a gourmet English restaurant a few weeks back and they had some great quiche. More interesting is that they made it in individual dishes instead of as a pie. This meant you had a lot more crust per quiche. Also it would be faster to bake and the presentation is more impressive. I’ll be baking all mine that way from now on.

Quiche filling:

6 eggs

1 cup of whole milk ( or mix cream with 2% or skim milk )

About 1.5 cups of vegetables. Vegetables need to be cooked first so leftovers are great to use. Here are some of my favorite combinations:

{ tomatoes ( fresh - diced ), spinach, onions, cheddar cheese (grated) }

{ spinach, mushrooms, red peppers, goat cheese (diced) }

Mix all the ingredients.

Pie:

Use one pie crust to line the bottom of a 9″ pie plant.

Pour the filling into the pie.

Bake at 400′ about 40 minutes or until center is set. ( Many people cook the crust first for about 15 minutes then add the filling and bake until set. I always just cooked them together. )

Individual Pies:

One pie crust for each quiche

Line 2 pyrex cooking dishes ( ~6″ across x 2″ deep ) with the pie crust. Let the extra crust stand up around the edges.

Divide filling between the dishes

Bake at 400′ until center is set ~ 30 minutes.

There are medieval recipes for cheese, onion, spinach and spice tarts to be served on days that you were not supposed to eat meat. But quiche itself originally came from Germany. The word Quiche is from ‘Kuchen’ meaning cake in German. Originally it was made with eggs, milk and bacon. Later cooks added cheese. The crust was originally made from bread dough, not pie crusts. It gained popularity in England after WWII and in the United States shortly thereafter.

Peach cobbler is an old favorite of mine. In the last few years I started making it with ginger biscuits. Truth is I usually use Bisquick, but the following baking soda biscuit recipe works well too. Once you have the batter mixed take about a 1/4 cup of crystallized ginger, chop it fine and mix it in before cooking the biscuits.

Biscuits

2 cup flour

4 teaspoons baking powder

1 Tablespoon of sugar

1/2 cup butter

2/3 cup milk

1/4 cup of crystallized ginger chopped fine.

We recently acquired a gourmet English restaurant in the area. They used pears with crystallized ginger biscuits in their cobbler. I liked it very much. The second time I had it they placed a tiny square, perhaps 1″x1″x very thin chocolate under the biscuit. I liked it better with out the chocolate but you might try it both ways and see what you think.

Peach filling

1/2 cup sugar

2 teaspoons vanilla

2 teaspoons lemon juice

1 Tablespoon flour

1 dozen peaches, peeled and sliced

Mix the sugar, vanilla, lemon juice and flour well. Then add peach slices and mix to coat.

Pear filling

1 teaspoon orange peel

1/2 teaspoon cinnamon

1 Tablespoon flour

1/2 cup sugar

12 pears, peeled and sliced

Mix orange peel, cinnamon, flour and sugar. Add pear slices and mix to coat.

Divide either your peach or pear filling among 12 cobbler cups. Cook at 350 about 20 minutes. Spoon biscuit filling on to top of fruit and cook about 10-15 minutes longer until biscuits just start to brown.

Top with a spoonful of whipped cream if desired.

Fruit cobblers were first made in America in the western part of the nation where they were served as breakfast. It wasn’t until the early 1900s they they began to migrate to the dessert menu. The name cobbler for cooked fruit pies with crusts came into use in 1864 in a Yale Literary Magazine in a list of things to be given up during training.