Palak Paneer (and how to make paneer)

I made cheese! Wohoo! I love activities where in cooking where i can make the components that you're so used to buying ready made. It adds another level to the care and control you have over a dish. And in this case, paneer is so cheap and so easy to make, I'm sure it, or other home made cheeses, will appear in other recipes down the line.

Palak Paneer is a vegetarian curry using paneer instead of meat, and with spinach as the basis for the sauce. Paneer has a taste and texture similar to firm ricotta (in fact this whole dish rings of cannelloni filling to me); as such, it acts in this dish as a conveyor of the sauce's flavor rather than as a distinct flavoring element of its own.

Happy cheese making!

Brodo with Spinach & Ricotta Dumplings

So a brodo, it turns out, is a lovely rustic sounding Italian name for a broth. I've heard some tell that a true brodo must contain pasta of some sort, but bah! These dumplings are pasta enough for me.

Looks like i've achieved my holy grail of broth clarity: I had originally made a beautifully vivid yellow, but somewhat cloudy broth. I placed it in the fridge overnight to pull it out only to find that it had become a murky muddy brown!! So i went to trusty google to attempt the fabled egg raft method for clarifying broths. And check it out!! That is some super clear broth there if i do say so myself.

This is a great wintry dish that is light yet filling and satisfying at the same time. Feel free to replace the spinach with 1 cup of frozen spinach to save some time.

Spanakopita

You can probably pick which recipes i'm making for my weekly lunches! Spanakopita is a Greek dish of a yummy mixture of spinach and feta rolled up in flaky filo pastry.

Ingredients:

• 250gm spinach
• 150gm good quality feta, crumbled
• 75gm parmesan finely grated
• 1/2 cup pine nuts, roasted
• 10 sheets filo pastry
• 100gm butter, melted
  
• Pepper
• 2 eggs, lighted beaten
• 5 spring onions, chopped coarsely

Method:
Preheat oven to 180 degrees celsiuis.
Saute the spinach until soft and mushy and transfer to a sieve. When cool enough to handle, squeeze the spinach to remove as much water as possible.
Mix the spinach, feta, parmesan, eggs, pine nuts, onions and eggs together in a large bowl. Season with pepper. 

On a clean surface lay out the first piece of filo.
Brush entire sheet with melted butter.

Lay a second sheet of filo over the first, and also brush this with butter.
Fold the filo in half lengthways.
Place 2 tablespoons of the filling onto across the left of the pastry leaving about 5cm at each end, as per the below picture. 

Roll the filo into a log.
Curl the filo into a rough spiral, tucking the  ends of the filo underneath so that the shape stays put.
Place onto a baking tray and brush again with butter.
Repeat for the remaining 5 spanakopita. 

Bake in the oven for approximately 20minutes or until lightly browned.

Serve warm, i think it pairs well with a light caprese salad.