The Best & Worst of the Internet and Gorgeously Green with Ottolenghi

As the title of this post suggests, this week I've experienced the very best and worst of what the internet has to offer.  I've been the victim of some unwanted and rather "creepy" attention - a sad reminder that not everyone out there uses the internet with the same decency and respect that you or I might.  However, I'm not going to dwell on that.  At the same time, I've been reminded just how much the internet in general, and the food blogging community in particular, can enrich our lives.

When I first started my blog, a little over four years ago, it was really to find an outlet for expressing my food and travel experiences, and a place to record the food that I love to share with family and friends, so that others may be able to share it too.  It never for one moment occurred to me that this would become an avenue for meeting some truly wonderful people and developing great friendships.

The very first time I arranged a meeting with a fellow blogger, it seemed a little strange.  The lovely Sasa and I had been visiting each other's blogs for a little while, and exchanged a few tweets.  When we both happened to be visiting family in Auckland at the same time we decided to meet for a coffee.  I have to say, I hadn't gone out to meet a complete stranger since the last time I'd gone on a blind date (most unsuccessfully I might add), almost 30 years earlier.  So I was nervous.  What would she be like?  Would we find plenty to talk about?  You know ... the usual stuff.  I needn't have worried.  From the instant we met there was never an awkward moment.  And what do two food bloggers meeting for the first time talk about?  Well, you might reasonably expect that it would be about food, right?  But no.  We talked about relationships, both past and present;  our families, and our relationships with them;  travel;  yoga;  studying and making a new start;  old jobs and old habits;  hopes for the future;  and so on.  In short, all the things that a couple of friends who'd known each other for years might talk about.

And so it has been with every food blogger that I have gone on to meet since.  I know now, without a shadow of a doubt, that a passion for food and generosity of spirit go hand in hand.  I know now that the common denominator in this food blogging community is not just the obvious love of good food - it's warmth, passion, kindness, compassion, generosity, a zest for life, humour, creativity, and so much more.

Through my love of all things Ottolenghi, which you're all by now very well aware of, I came across Beth Corman Lee's blog OMG! Yummy and, through her blog, discovered the wonderful Tasting Jerusalem community, hosted by Beth and her long-time friend Sarene Wallace.  From the outset, I was impressed not just with Beth's lovely food, but also her warmth and enthusiasm, her genuine excitement at discovering and experimenting with new ingredients as we cook together, and her very obvious hunger (pardon the tragic food pun) to learn more.

So, once I planned this trip to the Bay Area of San Francisco, and discovered that Beth lived nearby, I knew that I wanted to meet her.  And, despite her busy family life, and my fairly busy holiday schedule, we managed to connect this week and arrange to meet for lunch in Mountain View (the small city in Silicone Valley where I am staying).

The main street of Mountain View is a lovely tree-lined boulevard, with probably half a mile of side by side cafes (both sides of the street), covering just about every type of cuisine you can imagine.  I can tell you that the smells wafting up the street, come midday, are absolutely amazing.  So as you might expect, we agreed to meet outside a cafe, and then we strolled, eyeing up the many choices on offer.  It didn't take us long to discover a Mediterranean cafe called Ephesus, with predominantly Greek and Turkish influences, that looked promising.  When the menu revealed to us a number of dishes that, through our shared love of Ottolenghi's food, we had either tried or have on the "must try" list, we knew this was the place for us.

Of course, starting our meal with the hummus was a no-brainer, and discussion of its merits by comparison to those of Ottolenghi's naturally ensued.  On the recommendation of our waiter, Beth opted for The Alexander - a veritable mountain of shaved lamb and beef in a rich tomato sauce, served over chunks of bread, with a cooling pool of yoghurt on the side.  As soon as I noticed Maqluba on the menu, I couldn't not have it.  Maqluba is a layered savoury "cake" of tomatoes, aubergine, chicken, cauliflower, rice and spices, and I've had this one marked to try in my Jerusalem book since the day I bought it.  I loved the way at Ephesus they had made the dish in individual moulds, and now I can't wait to get home and try making this dish.

So, food aside, just as in the case of every other food blogger I've ever met, my conversation with Beth revolved around family, children, growing up, our travels - places we've been and places we hope to go, work history, our hopes for the future, and our time together ran out long before we ran out of things to talk about.  It was such a joy to meet Beth and lovely to make a new friend.

Speaking of Ottolenghi, at I Heart Cooking Clubs this week our theme is Gorgeously Green.  Now I've been cooking like a mad thing this week - lasagne, shepherds pie, fish and caper kebabs, Jamie Oliver's fantastic fish pie, a batch of Nigella's flourless chocolate brownies, a batch of chocolate caramel crispy cakes, a batch of these divine raw lemon & coconut truffles, and numerous big batches of roasted tomato pasta sauce - all to stock up the freezer for my daughter before I head back home to New Zealand.  But in terms of coming up with something gorgeously green to share with you this week, well I'm afraid I just dropped the ball and somehow it didn't happen.  To compensate, however, I thought I'd give you a little bit of a round-up of a few gorgeously green Ottolenghi dishes I've made and shared in the past.  Hope you find something you enjoy.

Baked Artichokes & Broad Beans:  This was one of the first Ottolenghi dishes I ever made, and still one of my favourites.  The use of artichokes and broad beans makes this a quintessentially spring dish, but with both vegetables being readily available jarred and frozen this is a great dish to bring a little bit of the lightness of spring to the table any time of the year.  Leftovers I found kept well for a couple of days.

Broccoli, Leek & Blue Cheese Pie:  This pie got rave revues in my house when I first made it - so much so that I was called upon to make it twice in one week.  It is both easy and economical to make, tastes great both hot and cold, and reheats well should you be lucky enough to have leftovers.  In actual fact the leek filling tastes so good that half of it usually doesn't even make it into the pie, and I imagine it could be used as a great accompaniment to some grilled or roasted chicken.

Fried Zucchini, Pea & Quinoa Salad:  This is one of those great recipes that you can play around with to suit what you have on hand.  Apart from the fried zucchini, which is really the hero of the dish, anything else goes.  In this instance I used peas instead of edamame, quinoa instead of pasta, and feta instead of buffalo mozzarella.  Get the picture?! 

If you would like to get to know Yotam Ottolenghi a little better, then do go and visit my friends at I Heart Cooking Clubs and see what they've all cooked up ...

... or check out Jerusalem and Ottolenghi's other great titles available from Amazon USA, Amazon UK or Fishpond NZ.

           

Greek Spinach & Feta Pie

Vefa's Kitchen is a cookbook I've had on my shelves for a while now, and is one I often pick up when I want a culinary trip down the memory lanes of Greece.  And whenever I think back to one dish or another that I've eaten on one of my trips to the Greek islands, and am wondering whether or not I can recreate it, I only have to pick up this weighty tome and I can almost always find what I'm looking for.

This week I had the need to come up with some portable food, and what could possibly be better for portable food than pie?  Actually what could be better for all sorts of things than pie?  Not a lot, but as a self-confessed pastry-phobe (making it that is, not eating it), it's not something that gets produced very often in my kitchen.

Of course, phyllo pastry is an absolute God-send to a pastry phobe.  For a start no-one, not even for an instant, expects you to make your own.  It's readily available in most supermarkets, and keeps for ages in your fridge.  It's also very easy to use, but produces stunning results.  This is another one of those examples of the end result always earning you more credit than the effort that actually went in merits.  Love things like that.  Also, there is something about those delicate, flaky, crisp shards of pastry that almost makes me feel like this is the health food equivalent of pastry.  Of course, layered up with all that extra melted butter or oil, we know it's not, but I like to think it is.

As soon as I think about phyllo pastry, I am immediately reminded of Greek pies and pastries, and the way they use phyllo to stunning effect in so many ways.  So it was that I turned to Vefa once again, thinking of perhaps creating some spanakopita.  I found her recipe for a Spinach & Cheese pie, which in this case was simply several layers of phyllo in the base of a pie dish, filled with the spinach and cheese mixture, and then topped again with several layers of phyllo.  And you could certainly keep it as simple as that and still end up with a great pie.  However, I'd seen pies made into coils like this in some of the Greek bakeries and decided to give that a try.  It really took very little extra effort, and the results were stunning.

I hope you'll give this a try.  It is perfect for a light lunch or supper with a simple salad, and it also makes great picnic food if you happen to live some place where picnicking might be an option right now.  Of course, there's also nothing wrong with throwing a colourful blanket and a few cushions on the living room floor and having an indoor picnic to inject a little bit of summer into the middle of winter.

Greek Spinach & Feta Pie Recipe

Adapted from recipe by Vefa Alexiadou

from Vefa's Kitchen

Serves 4

Vegetarian

Click here for a printable copy of this recipe

1 tablespoon olive oil

1 leek

flaky sea salt

500g (1 lb) spinach

generous handful fresh dill, finely chopped

generous handful fresh parsley, finely chopped

200g (7 oz) feta cheese, crumbled

2 tablespoons Greek-style natural yoghurt

2 eggs, lightly beaten

2 tablespoons melted butter

freshly ground black pepper

1/4 cup olive oil

15 sheets ready-made phyllo pastry

Preheat your oven to 180 degrees C (350 degrees F), and lightly grease a 23 cm (9 inch) flan or pie tin with oil.

Cut leek in half lengthwise, wash and dry well, and then slice each half thinly, crosswise, so that you end up with thin half circles.  Heat the tablespoon of olive oil in a saute pan over medium heat, sprinkle with flaky sea salt, and cook until the leeks are softened but not browned.  Remove from pan and set aside to cool.

Remove the coarse stalks from the spinach and put the leaves into a colander.  Sprinkle liberally with sea salt, and using your fingers, rub the salt into the leaves.  They will start to give up some of their moisture and start to "wilt" down.  Rinse well, and drain.  Tip the leaves into a clean tea towel, and squeeze firmly to wring out all the excess moisture.  Alternatively you could blanch the spinach, but why dirty a pot unnecessarily?!

Put the spinach into a large bowl.  Add the cooled leeks, the chopped dill and parsley, the crumbled feta, yoghurt, beaten eggs, and melted butter.  Season liberally with pepper - you won't need to add salt, as there will be more than enough saltiness from the feta.  Mix everything together until well combined.

Lay your stack of phyllo sheets out on a clean tea towel.  You will be working with one sheet of time, and it helps to always keep the remaining sheets covered with a damp tea towel, as they tend to dry out quickly.

Place one sheet of the phyllo dough directly in front of you, and brush lightly with olive oil.  Place a second sheet on top, and brush it with olive oil.  Repeat with a third sheet.  With the long edge towards you, place a few spoonfuls of the spinach mixture all the way across the width of the dough.

Now roll the dough up into a long sausage - see photo "step one" below.  Then, take that spinach roll, seam down, and curve into your pie dish, and brush the top with a little olive oil - see photo "step two" below.  Now repeat the above steps, to make four more spinach rolls.  As you make each one add it to the pie dish, overlapping the end of the previous roll, and starting to coil the rolls in towards the centre of the dish - see photos "step three" and "step four" below.

Make sure the whole top is lightly brushed with olive oil.  Sprinkle with a little water and bake in the preheated oven for 50 to 60 minutes, or until golden brown.

This is heavenly while still warm from the oven, but is also pretty hard to beat served at room temperature too.

Vefa's Kitchen is available from Amazon in the US, Amazon UK, and from Fishpond in New Zealand.

                   

I am sharing this pie this week with my friends Michelle at Ms. enPlace hosting See Ya In the Gumbo, and with April at The 21st Century Housewife hosting Gallery of Favourites.

Broccoli, Leek & Blue Cheese Pie

I've got to confess that I've been feeling a little despondent about blogging lately.  Not that I've been short on inspiration for things to cook, but now that we're in the very depths of autumn (in fact, getting perilously close to winter, even) I'm often finding these days that, by the time I get a dish finished and onto the plate, night has fallen.  Those of you who are also bloggers know that this means just one thing - the dreaded "orange" photos.  And so it is that several dishes I've made for you over the last couple of weeks have been rendered completely unblogworthy by the lack of a decent photograph.

One thing I'm not despondent about, however, is this Broccoli, Leek & Blue Cheese Pie - it's so good, in fact, that I've made it twice in the last week.  This is something of a rarity for me, but I can tell you that it won't end there - I will definitely be making this one again and again.

This pie is both easy and economical to make, tastes great both hot and cold, and reheats well should you be lucky enough to have leftovers.  In actual fact the leek filling tastes so good that I ate half of it before it even made it into the pie, and I imagine it could be used as a great accompaniment to some grilled or roasted chicken.

This dish comes from one of my favourite cookbooks, "Plenty: Vibrant Recipes from London's Ottolenghi" by Yotam Ottolenghi, and is my contribution this week to Cookbook Sundays.

Yes I know I have already shared several recipes with you from this book, and it would have been good to introduce you to another one of my books, but a couple of things I had planned for you fell foul to the previously mentioned unblogworthy photographs - obviously I will just have to have another go at some of those things.  In the meantime, hope you'll have a go at this pie, and try to imagine that it tastes a whole lot better than these photos might suggest.

Broccoli, Leek & Blue Cheese Pie

Adapted from a recipe by Yotam Ottolenghi

from "Plenty: Vibrant Recipes from London's Ottolenghi"

Serves 4

Vegetarian

Click here for a printable copy of this recipe

1x packet puff pastry

1x head broccoli, cut into florets

1 tablespoon butter

2x leeks, thinly sliced

2/3 cup cream

handful of fresh tarragon leaves, chopped

1-1/2 tablespoons wholegrain mustard

flaky sea salt

black pepper

100g (3.5 oz) blue cheese

1x egg, lightly beaten

Preheat the oven to 200 degrees C (400 degrees F).  Lightly grease a 23cm (9 inch) tart dish (a loose-bottomed tin is ideal if you have one).

Roll out two-thirds of the pastry into a circle that is large enough to line the base of the tart dish.  Prick the pastry base all over with a fork, then line with parchment paper and fill with baking beans.  Bake blind for about 15 minutes, then remove the paper and baking beans and bake for a further 5 minutes.  Set aside to cool.

Meanwhile, prepare the filling.  Bring a medium sized pan of water to the boil, add the broccoli and allow to cook for about two minutes, until just tender.  Drain, refresh immediately in cold water, then drain again and leave to dry.

Melt the butter in a saute pan over gentle heat, add the leaks and saute until soft, but not browned - about 10 minutes.  Add the cream, tarragon, mustard, salt and pepper.  Stir to combine everything and remove from the heat.  Taste and adjust seasoning as necessary.

Spread the leek mixture over the base of the pastry case, and strew the broccoli over the top, nestling the florets into the leek mixture.  Crumble over the blue cheese.

Brush the rim of the pastry case with the beaten egg.  Roll out the remaining pastry for a lid and place over the filling, pressing firmly around the edges to attach the lid to the base.  Tuck in or trim off any excess.

Brush the lid with the beaten egg, prick in a few places with a fork to allow steam to escape, and bake in the preheated oven for 30 minutes or until golden brown.

Remove from oven and allow to stand for a few minutes before serving.

I'm sharing this pie this week at Cookbook Sundays, where my friends are delving into their cookbook collections and sharing some of their recipes.  Do stop by to see what they're cooking - you might even feel inspired to link up a recipe from one of your own cookbooks.