Name of Recipe: Spinach pastries
Number of People: approx 30 or more if you are prepared to re-roll the pastry leftovers
Ingredients:
6 sheets frozen flaky pastry - thawed
1 egg whisked with 1 tbs milk
Filling -
Roughly chopped spinach leaves to fill the TM steaming basket or 250 g baby spinach
100g parmesan, cut into cubes
3 eggs
100 g feta, crumbled
250 g ricotta, I used light
1/2 tsp salt
Ground Pepper to taste
1/4 tsp nutmeg
Preparation:
Place the steaming basket containing the spinach leaves into the TM bowl, add 600 mls boiling water and cook until wilted Varoma temp/speed 3. If using baby spinach you will need 250 gms - just blanch briefly in boiling water. Set aside & cool the TM bowl.
When the spinach is cool, squeeze out all liquid and chop the spinach finely.
Pre-heat oven to 190o fan forced. Line 2 large oven trays with either baking paper or silicon liners.
Grate the parmesan 5 sec/speed 8, set aside.
Beat the eggs 5 sec/speed 6 then add all remaining ingredients - spinach, feta, parmesan, ricotta, S & P and nutmeg.
Cut out 9 cm circles from pastry - 1 in each corner and 1 in the middle will give you 5 per sheet. I used a large fine bone china mug, the only thing I had which was 9 cm.
Place a slightly heaped teaspoonful of mixture in the centre of each pastry circle, fold over and press the edges together lightly with your fingers then follow up with the tines of a fork to seal them properly.
Brush with egg wash, place onto the trays and bake for 15 - 20 minutes or until golden & crisp.
Tips/Hints:
I couldn't be bothered rolling out all the scraps for the tiny pastries so I only did enough to make 1 large calzone to use up the remainder of the filling.
You could also use a tortilla. Place it into a warmed large frying pan until it is pliable, fill one half and fold over onto itself then pan fry yourself a quesadilla.
I put the first tray in to cook whilst I prepared the second tray as they do take a while to make.
I froze these tiny pastries on a tray then vacuum sealed them for a party I'm attending in May.
This is my take on a Julie Goodwin recipe from her book The Heart of the Home. It's a Greek recipe given to her by a lady called Maria. By all means make your own short pastry as Julie Goodwin did but I like puff pastry nibbles.
