Tag Archives: spinach

Spinach and Mushroom Handpies

I think my spinach and mushroom hand pies turned out really well.

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The crusts had Parmesan and cheddar cheese. They were fantastic. I had to improvise a little. I didn’t have a 4 inch pastry cutter but I did have a cap from the pine nuts container that I used in the filling. So I just used my tiny little carving knife to cut into the pastry around the circular container.

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I had made 9 pies from the first batch of pastry. I realize that my pastry probably wasn’t 4-in because I couldn’t fit the said amount of filling, according to the recipe, into them without fearing that they’d explode.

Instead, I managed to make another batch of pastry. I also realized that for my second batch, I formed my batch into a flat rectangle for chilling instead of a conventional disc. That way, I just rolled out the pastry to form this super long sheet of pastry and cut my circles out from there. Another funny thought, I actually had used less butter in my first batch due to a calculation error. That’s why my pastry was so much harder to roll out and cut in my first attempt.

Here’s a look at my filling:

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I didn’t have feta so I substituted Parmesan and goat cheese instead.

These pies were probably the most fun to make, especially after getting into the groove.

 

Roasted Butternut Squash Pie

I kind of made this pie up, so here’s hoping it isn’t awful. Basically, I like roasted butternut squash, so I decided to use that, and just went from there. I looked up a bunch of pumpkin and/or squash recipes online (pie fillings, but also pasta sauces, soups, etc.) to get some ideas for ingredients, and I landed on using onions (which seemed to be in almost every recipe), gorgonzola (most recipes used gruyere, swiss, or cheddar, but gorgonzola has a stronger flavor. Plus, I like it a lot), spinach, & chives (my personal favorite herb. When I was a kid I would munch on raw chives all the time. They’re delicious).

As for the crust, I tried whole wheat, and I’m not sure it worked out too well. I didn’t use a recipe specifically for whole wheat flour – instead, I used a recipe that called for all-purpose flour, and replaced part of the all-purpose flour with whole wheat flour. The dough was really difficult to work with. Anyway, I’m not terribly pleased with the crust, and I probably won’t be doing whole wheat again without a recipe specifically designed for that kind of flour.

-Ali Bunis

(pictures below)

 

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Sunny spinach pie

This just looked too good to pass up. Best part was, it tasted amazing too! Win-win.

So basically you make a double crust, opening it up to a bit wider than one would for a pie in a pie plate. On the bottom crust you put your spinach-ricotta-spices mixture in a pattern like this:

20131117-sunny-spinach-pie-1Then lay the top crust over it, tucking it in around the central mound of filling, and making sure the outer edges line up with one another. Use a bowl to shape the dough over the central mound (it’ll give it a nice dome shape). Moisten the edges of the two layers and use a fork to crimp them together. Poke the fork tines down through both layers in a circle around the bowl to help bind them together around the center dome.

Then you do a magical slice-and-twist thing around the outer ring of filled pastry to get this:

20131117-sunny-spinach-pie-2It’s pretty amazing!