Saturday, November 28, 2009

Potato and Spinach Casserole

I picked up a great cookbook called Cooking for Two by Bruce Weinstein and Mark Scarbrough. This next recipe took some time, but was well worth the effort.












You need some butter, a large potato or 2, an onion, frozen spinach, 2 large eggs, feta, dill, parsley, cinnamon and salt and pepper. Preheat your oven to 350 degrees.



First thing is to thaw the spinach and then squeeze all the excess water out of it. Set it aside for now. Get a pot of water boiling for the potato slices.



Chop up the onion and the parsley.




Peel the potato and then cut it into thin slices. The book said to use a peeler to do this, but it was sort of difficult...



I think next time I will just use my mandolin slicer. This was a pain.



After you slice the potatoes and blast out a few choice curse words in frustration, get the slices into some water. If there is an easier or obvious way to do this with a vegetable peeler and I am just a doofus, please let me know.



Drain the potato slices then drop them in the boiling water, let those go for about 2 minutes, but don't cook them through.




Get the potatoes out of the hot tub and drain them.




Put the slices on a towel to further drain.




Melt some butter in a skillet and get the onions in.



Cook those for about 4 minutes then let them cool for a bit.




While the onions cool get your eggs, dill, parsley, pepper, cinnamon and salt in a bowl so you can easily add it to the food processor.



Dump it all in a food processor with the spinach, feta and the onions.



Give it a whirl until its a thick chunky paste. YUM.



Melt some more butter and we can start to assemble this bad boy.



Grease a casserole dish, I am using another great vintage Pyrex dish.



Layer in your first layer of potatoes.



Then smear some of the spinach mixture.



Do two more layers and finish with the potatoes on top.



Now pour that butter we melted all over the top of it. You really can't go wrong if that is the last step in the recipe 'drown it in some butter'. Pop it in the oven for about 40 minutes.



This looks like something you'd get at a fancy restaurant and pay way too much for.




If you've got some vegetarian pals you'd like to impress I would definitely give this recipe a try. It was absolutely delicious and the spinach is good for you so it sort of cancels out all the butter you poured over the top, sort of.

5 comments:

  1. This sounds really good. I am just not sure about the cinnamon. Could you taste a lot of it?

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  2. I was searching for vintage pyrex and came across your blog and two things I quickly noticed:
    1. I could have written the same bio. My hubby doesn't care about food, except for beef and bacon as well.
    2. I heart vintage pyrex. It's a bad addiction.

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  3. Hey. Thanks so much for using a recipe from Bruce's and my book. We really appreciate your liking it. And you're absolutely right: doing those potatoes with a peeler is a pain. Of course a mandoline would be easier. And I'm sure it's what Bruce used. But I, the writer, am constantly trying to reinterpret his concept for what I think is the American kitchen--which is less well equipped (clearly) than yours. Maybe I should just worry less and put things down as he does them? Anyway, thanks for highlighting this recipe. I'm glad you liked it.

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    Replies
    1. Hi Mark, can you recommend a substitute for the feta to make this recipe non-dairy? Thanks!

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  4. omgoodness that looks wonderful... Im sure adding little chunks of chicken into one of the layers wouldent make it bad either!

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