Spinach / Cheese / Egg Bake........An Entrée Or A Main Meal?

This entree is rich, quite filling and could be used for a meal by itself except maybe with a fresh tomato chive salad. Basically it is a tasty spinach mixed with a béchamel sauce served in an individual, small, shallow earthenware baking dish with a sunny side up egg in the middle and melted cheese on top. All this is baked in the oven till egg cooks and the cheese melts.......fantastic!
You will therefore need:
Serves one to 12 individual earthenware baking dishes.
-  Fresh Spinach washed three times, boiled, finely cut and well strained. You can strain it further by taking handfuls and pressing them between your hands until all the liquids drains out.
-  Eggs
-  Whatever cheese you wish from Gouda, Chester, Cheddar to Camembert or Chèvre but it must melt.
Method:
1)  The spinach:
  • Boil spinach with very little water. It will expel its own
  • Drain, cool, press with your hands all the water out.
  • Repeat with rest of spinach.
  • Cut as finely as possible. 
2) The béchamel.
  • 1/3 cup flour
  • 25 gms fresh butter, melted
  • Mix flour and butter and make a roux. Stir roux for 1/2 minute till flour cooks.
  • Add 500 ml boiled milk slowly slowly by stirring with a wire wisk.
  • Keep on wisking until the bechamel is smooth,  nice and thick.
  • Add salt, pepper, garlic powder if you wish, and nutmeg. Mix spinach and bechamel very well and check for seasoning. You can add whatever else you wish according to your imagination. The spinach béchamel mixture has to be very tasty. 
3)  Dressing the plate before baking:
  • Add some spinach/bechamel sauce mix, flatten, make a hole in the middle and break an egg in this hole.
  • Cover the whole lot with thin slices of a cheese of your choice.
  • Bake in preheated oven  160 degrees C for 15 minutes. or till the egg cooks and the cheese melts
4)  Serve hot, sprinkled with freshly ground pepper.
Suggested wine: none, left to your own choice.
Bon Appétit,
Stelio

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Bamia Mafroukeh--Ladies fingers with beef or lamg -Taste of Sudan.

S udan is the largest country in Africa. Lately there was a quarrel between the North and South (Juba). The reason: Oil. Chevron and other Petroleum companies found lots of Oil reserves in the South and so the fight started. I personally visited the village of Bentu, in the South during one of my visits to Chevron Oil Company in the South. As all countries, the Sudan also has its local foods. A very popular one is Molokhia which grows only in summer. Bamia, in Arabic, lady's fingers or internationally known as Okra can be readily found all year round. Bamia Mafroukeh is a delicious food eaten with the Sudanese bread called Kisra. The term Mafroukeh is act of breaking down the bamia when it well cooked to turn it into a thick, soup. There is special wooden utensil the Sudanese use. Ingredients: - 1 kg bamia Lady's fingers or Okra. - 1 kg beef or lamb bone free. - 1/2 kg fresh tomatoes cut in quarters. - 1 big onion roughly cut. - 6 cloves of garlic finely cut. - 
Read more

First Post (after a long time) January14th 2020 Pommes Dauphinoise

Image
A  most delicious common side dish for the Christmas Holidays, where fresh cream may be consumed without too much worry, is baked dish of sliced cream potatoes or culinarily the French would call  Pommes Dauphinoise. Please bear with me as it has been over 3 years I haven't blogged or used this program. Ingredient: - 1.4 kg of potatoes. - 500 ml full cream 35% - 500 ml full fat milk. - 2 cloves of garlic very finely cut. - some butter, salt and pepper to taste. Procedure: - Buy the potatoes as clean as possible. Peel and slice without washing into half inch slices. -  Mix sliced potatoes into a pan which can withstand the fire of the hob,all the milk and all the cream. Mix well. - Add the garlic. - Season with salt. pepper and nutmeg to taste. - Boil the potato mix till the potatoes are nearly soft. - At this point scatter a few pieces of butter around the pan and immediately transfer the pan into the oven till a nice color is obtained. 40 to 60 minutes. Carefu
Read more

Brandade de Morue - Cod / Potato Mash Gratin.

Image
T his recipe is based on Jacques Pepin's with a slight twist from myself to suit Greek taste. This recipe is for 4 persons as a starter. Ingredients : - 1 kg of salted cod fillet. - 1 kg of potatoes skinned. - 1.5 cups full fat milk. - At least 6 large cloves of garlic - 2 tsp. grated lemon zest. - 4 tsp, lemon juice. - Cayenne pepper to taste. - 1 cup of olive oil. - Freshly ground black pepper to taste - Freshly grated Parmigiano cheese. Procedure : - Preheat oven to 200 deg. C. - Skin the cod fillet and immerse into cold water and refrigerate. - Change water as many times as possible over the next 24 hours to desalinate. - Meanwhile boil the potatoes till tender (fork easily pearces potato).Peel and cut into pieces when cool. - When the cod is desalinated, cook in water by lightly simmering water until fork easily pearces the fish. Do not over cook the fish lest it becomes too hard. - Once cooled, make sure to the best of your ability to omit all the bon
Read more