Posted by ljmacphee on February 29, 2008 under Side Dishes | 
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.
Posted by ljmacphee on January 30, 2008 under Side Dishes |
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.