tales of mushy green stuff

[deird1]

A kilogram of spinach is a LOT of spinach.

Really. A lot. It's a huge quantity of spinach.

But recipe #11 - spinach and ricotta cannelloni - specified a kilogram of spinach, so I duly went forth and came home with massive amounts of it.
...too much, in fact, to fit in my saucepan. I had to spend an hour and a half rotating bits of spinach in and out of boiling water, so that it'd all get properly cooked.


Eventually, it ended up sitting soggily in a big bowl, where I was supposed to wring the rest of the water out of it by hand.

Aaaaand that's when I found out just how long it takes boiled spinach to cool down enough to not burn your hands when you pick it up and squish it. (Approximately an hour, taking one teeny handful at a time.)


Of course, getting squishy spinachy gunk is not the end of the recipe: I had to combine it with cheese, eggs, and herbs, and smoosh it around the bowl some more - also with my hands... which were getting pretty messy by this point.

Mind you, mushy green gunk is pretty fun to play with.

Which is good, because I had to play with it a lot.


(On reflection, I can see why the first thing the recipe says is "You don't have to cook it right away! It can stay in the fridge all night!", because once you've actually finished making this thing, you're completely sick of the sight of it.)


Anyway, post-mushing, I had to get all the mush into the cannelloni.

Unfortunately, my piping equipment gave up halfway through and stubbornly refusing to keep piping anything that wasn't icing. So I had to push the rest of the spinach into the cannelloni tubes by hand. (Or rather, by finger.)


I am now sitting down to an astonishingly late dinner - of meatloaf; the cannelloni's for tomorrow - which will be followed by an even later bedtime, and I still haven't even finished cleaning up the kitchen. But I don't really care, because... cannelloni! I MADE CANNELLONI! SPINACH AND RICOTTA CANNELLONI! ALL BY MYSELF! I ROCK!




(If I wasn't so stupidly ambitious, I'd happily get through my 52 recipes with mashed potatoes and scrambled eggs and stuff like that. That'd be so much less frustrating. But then again, if I wasn't so ambitious, I wouldn't be doing this whole recipe thing in the first place...)

Comments

[redsixwing]

Yum! You do rock!

[deird1]

Yay!

[stormwreath.livejournal.com]

recipe #11 - spinach and ricotta cannelloni - specified a kilogram of spinach

Are you sure the small print didn't say "Serves 12" or something? :D

[deird1]

It actually worked out to be quite small - once it had been cooked to within an inch of its life...

[velvetwhip]

I am deeply impressed, Popeye.


Gabrielle

[deird1]

*grins*

[xlivvielockex.livejournal.com]

I cook something pretty similar just for usual Sunday Italian dinner and I can give you a little tip about the spinach (and really ANY spinach you cook). If you have fresh spinach, the easiest way to cook it is to put a little bit of olive oil at the bottom of a very big pot. Rinse or soak the spinach to get the sand off (depending on if it is bunched or bagged). Heat the oil on medium heat until it's good and hot. Then toss the spinach in by the handful. It will wilt it down, steaming it with its own liquid. As it cooks down, add more handfuls. I never have soggy spinach with this method and it's so much quicker than boiling it.

[guy-who-reads.blogspot.com]

yeah, that. Even a small pot will do; I use a cast iron chicken roaster, which is just a big frying pan, really.

Mind you, I've never tried to stuff the cooked spinach into canneloni afterwards - you do rock, totally.

[deird1]

*takes notes*

[a2zmom]

It sounds delicious. But that really is a lot of spinach!

[draconin.livejournal.com]

I made this once years ago (and did it all 'by finger' as I had no piping equip!). As I recall I had the same issues with the spinach taking ages to cool down. I think in the end I ran cold water over it and that fixed things.

I concluded that it was much easier to buy it, I'm afraid. :-)

One recipe that I still make every now and then is Broccoli Pasta Sauce. Yum! Made with broccoli florets mashed up with saffron, toasted pine nuts and raisins with cracked black pepper. Sort of the vege version of Spag Bolognaise.

[immer_am_lesen]

I tend to steam spinach for these sorts of things- less overflowing boiling water to take care of! ;-)
Or, chuck it in a wok with a bit of oil, lid on top, and it cooks itself quite quickly.

Also, to process boiling-hot-squishy-spinach....rubber gloves!
Clean ones, of course. Hey, if they let you dunk your hands in boiling water safely, they let you squish boiling hot spinach safely too. Also great for peeling hothothot boiled eggs. :-)