Hand Me a Pie

I love getting fresh garden treats from our CSA at Almost Urban farms. Even though I do silly things like plant my own zucchini, beans, and potatoes and at times get overwhelmed with too much of a good thing, I still love it.  Some times I feel inundated with the dark leafy greens....there I said it. I love garden fresh veggies, but get tired of kale, Swiss chard, lovage, beet greens, and even plain old lettuce.  I'm not a huge salad lover.  The Boy loves sautéed greens and creamed greens but Hubby isn't a fan of cooked greens.  I like them mixed in with salads, but I can only eat so much salad.

What is a girl to do? Well, first off, I'm always on the hunt for new ideas, second, I seem to have a back log of magazines with recipes in them....soooooo it is that I happened upon a recipe for Kale and Spinach hand pies in the January 2013 edition of Chatelaine magazine.  It is a spanokopita inspired hand pie with feta using a pastry dough instead of phyllo. Of course I didn't follow the recipe....do I ever? 

Greens and spinach hand pies 

Pastry

1/2 cup cottage cheese

1 egg yolk

2 cups flour

1/2 tsp salt

1 cup butter, cold and cubed

Break out the food processor for this one.  Give the cottage cheese and egg yolk a whir with the blade.

Add the flour, salt, and butter.

Pulse until a ball forms.

Divide into 2 even portions, roll into rectangles, wrap in plastic wrap and chill in the fridge for about 1 1/2 hours.  This is a soft and squishy type of dough. You should still see tasty bits of butter through out it.

While the dough is getting its chill on, heat up a large skillet and wash up some dark leafy greens and get your ingredients ready. This time I used:

A handful of kale

A bunch of Swiss chard

Beet greens from 5 or 6 medium sized beets

1 small onion, finely chopped

1 tbsp oil

1/2 tsp red pepper flakes

A healthy grating of nutmeg

2 tsp chopped fresh dill

1/2 cup feta, crumbled

Wash your greens how ever you normally wash your greens, remove any large and tough ribs from the greens. Chop them all up into bite size pieces. (I hate biting into something and having a long string of greens pull the rest of the filling out.)

Sauté the onion until soft (some garlic would be a great idea here too!)

Add in the hot pepper flakes, greens, and grate in the nutmeg.

Continue to sauté until the green are wilted.  Set aside to cool.

Once cool, drain any excess liquid and stir in the feta.

Now you are ready to rock n roll and assemble.

Pre heat the oven to 375F and line a baking sheet with parchment paper.

The amount of dough should get you 10 rectangles approximately 6" x 5", give or take.  Mine never turn out the same size.

Lightly flour the counter and roll out the dough and cut into 10 somewhat even rectangles.

Divide your greens into 10 somewhat even portions.

Scoop 1 portion of greens onto the middle of each rectangle and fold the pastry in half (short end to short end) to enclose the deliciousness inside pressing to seal the edges. Crimping with a fork makes a nice pretty edge....

Brush the tops with an egg wash and use just the tip of a sharp knife to puncture the tops of the pies to vent the steam.

Pop into the oven and bake. For about 25 minutes or until golden brown.

These were wonderful!  The pastry was flakey and easy to work with.  The Boy enjoyed leftovers direct from the fridge when he came home from work, or before work, or before bedtime....

Until next time, stay warm and eat well.

Late Breakfast or Early Lunch?

Breakfast this morning Lunch this afternoon was another super simple meal. (It is my summer vacay so sometimes brekkie happens at lunch...) I cooked 2 eggs over easy and served them on a bed of farm fresh kale and a side of multi grain rye toast.  It was simple, easy, and didn't heat the kitchen up.

I must admit that I have never really tried kale. It is always used as decoration and I never really thought about eating it.  We tried making the kale chips last week, but no one liked them. As a matter of fact, it almost deterred us from trying the kale again. A friend mentioned using a dehydrator instead so I will have to look into that. I think next time it needs a side of fruit but I did enjoy the kale on it's own with the runny egg yolks.

Until next time, stay warm cool and eat well.

There's Kale With My Bacon

Yesterday was CSA pick up day which netted us a lot of the same types of things as last week. We've had a busy week so I failed to take photos of our haul before I prepped it for the fridge. (Sorry about that.) I did however get excited because we got more edible flowers this week!!

People warned us when they learned we had signed up for a Community Supported Agriculture program, telling us that we'd get nothing but kale. We have actually only received 2 small bunches of the curly green stuff. I tried making kale chips with our small bunch of kale last week but I did not like them. Perhaps I need to try again and bake them a bit shorter? The Boy and I both like raw kale though. We even made ourselves some BKT sammies for lunch today and the kale worked so well with the sammie!

Our busy week actually started this past weekend with the Boy and his baseball playoffs. They managed to win all 4 games in the tournament and will play for the City championship tonight. (go team!) Sunday we had some people come on over so they could tear out yucky old garage down, knock the crumbly front steps off the house, take out some tree stumps, and tear out the old fence...I am sooooo glad someone else did the work.

Goodbye old garage...glad the garden made it safe and sound!

So long crumbly and dangerous steps!

Did I mention the water main break that caused me to be without water for a short while?

Now, we have a whole bunch of shirtless men working in the yard....life is sooooo darn tough sometimes.  A new fence is going up as are new stairs on the front of the house. I actually can't believe these guys just keep working in this heat. I almost feel bad sitting here inside blogging....almost.

Work is progressing nicely and I am excited about a new fence and a chance to get my yard done up the way I want it....once I decide what that is, it will be fun. I promise...

Until next time, stay warm stay cool and eat well.