SPINACH AND FETA ROLLS

(adapted from Souvlaki for the Soul)

• 1 sheet of puff pastry (any frozen variety will do; I used Pepperidge Farm but I’ve heard that the Trader Joe’s one is much better)
• 10 oz of chopped frozen spinach, defrost and squeeze out excess water
• 3 oz of crumbled feta
• 5 oz of ricotta
• 1 egg
• 1/4 tsp of nutmeg (which I forgot and then had to sprinkle it on top of the rolls right before putting them in the oven)
• salt and pepper to taste
• 3 tbsp roasted pine nuts (you can easily roast pine nuts but putting the necessary amount in a pan and browning them over high heat, makes sure not to burn them)

Thaw out Puff pastry either overnight in the refrigerator or on the counter top for 4 hours.

Mix the rest of the ingredients in a medium bowl.  You can probably do this in a food processor and make it easier on yourself, but since I don’t have on of those, I used a good old fashioned fork and some elbow grease.

Roll out your dough into a rectangular shape and spread the spinach mixture on it evenly. Roll the dough up until it resembles a log, making sure to  seal it with a little beaten egg on the final roll. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees C.  Using a lightly floured serrated knife cut  the rolled up dough into 1/2 inch thick slices.  Brush your baking tray with oil or use some parchment paper, and then put your freshly cut slices onto the tray.  Make sure you have a little bit of space between each roll to allow room for the dough to puff up.  Bake for 25 minutes in the middle of the oven until the rolls are golden brown.  Enjoy while they are hot or save as a snack for later, your choice.

I apologize or the poor quality of the photo, my camera did not want to cooperate this morning.  Next time, I will have better photos I promise.

Pumpkin and Chocolate Chip Pancakes

So I’m a bit of a procrastinator.  As you can tell from the previous blog entry dated July 12th, I took the summer off and procrastinated with my blog, but now that the semester has started again, I have decided to procrastinate once again and so here I am.  You see I have Arabic class tomorrow for which I need to pick out two passages from the reading we had done over the previous two weeks to discuss them in class tomorrow vis-a-vis the vocabulary and grammar.  So before I started I thought I’d clean up my bookmarks in firefox and this led me to this blog.  Then I chose to procrastinate some more to write this entry.  I know I should probably be ashamed of myself, but I’ll just stay late in the library armed with a cup of gross coffee to finish up my work.  Sleep is over-rated anyhow.

Despite my lack of posts, I have actually been baking quite a bit as well as taking lots of photos.  So here’s a recipe of some chocolate chip-pumpkin buttermilk pancakes that I made earlier in the summer.  Since this recipe made quite a few pancakes, I ended up freezing them and eating them over a period of time.  I actually unearthed the last one about a week ago in the freezer and it tasted just as good (ok almost as good) as it did hot of the pan.

Pumpkin and Chocolate Chip Pancakes

• 2 eggs
• 1 1/4 cups buttermilk
• 4 tablespoons canola oil
• 3 tablespoons canned pumpkin
• 1/4 cup granulated sugar
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
• 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1/4 teaspoon cloves
• 1/2 cup chocolate chips

1. Combine eggs, buttermilk, butter, pumpkin, sugar, and salt into a large bowl. You can use an electric mixer if you have one but I just used a whisk since I have almost no cooking appliances in my house.
2. Combine the remaining ingredients, except chocolate chips, in a separate bowl.  Once the dry ingredients are well mixed, fold them into the wet ingredients with a spatula.  Make sure not to over-mix the batter, so mix only until the ingredients are barely incorporated.
3. Preheat the pan over medium heat and coat it with oil cooking spray, while you let your batter rest for about 5 minutes.
4. Once your pan is hot, spoon the batter, 1/4 cup at a time, onto the pan.
5. Drop a few chocolate chips onto the pancake as it’s cooking (i used about 5-9 per pancake).
6. Cook pancakes until the edges are dry and bubbles begin to form in the center and then flip to the other side and cook until they are brown.

While pancakes are best when they are hot, right off the stove, you can easily freeze them and eat them at a later date, like that morning you thought that you had no food in the house and discovered the one lonely pancake in the freezer… trust me, that’s the start of a glorious day right there.

Now that that’s out of the way, I plan to post the first recipe sometime this week.  Hope everyone’s excited about this because I know I am ^_^