Wednesday, August 4, 2010

Summer Vegetable Pastry... thing


I have no idea where this came from, I just thought it would taste good. My family surprisingly agreed, which come to think, is really lucky on my part. I used it as the main dish of my sister's birthday dinner tonight... Without trying it first... Wheeeew!
I did, however, use everything but the pastry from my mother's garden! All legitimately organic and deliciously pesticide and growing agent free!

You will need:
~ 2 puffed pastry sheets, thawed
~ 2 cups Ricotta cheese
~ Olive oil handy
Produce:
~ 1 small Summer squash, quartered and sliced
~ 1 medium zucchini, quartered and sliced
~ 7 Roma tomatoes, large cubes ( it doesn't really matter what type of tomatoes you use, I just had four million Romas, so I used them )
~ 1/3 cup fresh, chopped spinach
~ 3/4 cup finely chopped white onions
~3/4 cup thickly sliced white onions
~ 1 Tbl. (healthy Tbl., usually turns out to be 2 Tbls. for my taste),minced garlic
Seasoning:
~ Sage
~ s/p
~ Oregano, must be fresh
~ (opt) red pepper flakes to taste


In this recipe I used a glass cooking dish and without greasing the bottom, just stretched one sheet of pastry to fit and set aside. In my nicely seasoned, iron skillet, I sauteed on low heat in some olive oil, the onions, summer squash and zukes. I added a little salt and pepper and let them get soft.

While they are sitting in the skillet on low heat, doing their thing, cube your tomatoes and put on top of the pastry in the dish. Don't worry about the liquid, it is needed to cook the insides. Now preheat your oven to 375 d. and put the top shelf almost to the top. You want room for the dish and a few inches in between the burner and the top of the dish.

When the veggies in the skillet are soft and starting to brown, pour onto the tomatoes and get as much of the oil in as you can, this has a lot of flavor!

In a separate bowl place the ricotta. To this add the chopped onions, garlic, s/p, sage and red pepper flakes. Mix up and set aside.

Add the spinach on top of the veggies and then tear into pieces the fresh oregano and add on top of that. Then carefully add the seasoned ricotta. This can be tricky because of the spinach not being very stable, but you can do it!

Over that, stretch the other puff pastry. Almost tuck in the sides and get it as close to the glass as possible. Grab some olive oil in a little bowl and add some salt, pepper and garlic and brush on the top of the pastry. Place on top shelf in oven and pull out when the crust on top is nice and brown and puffed!

Serve warm and goes really well with a light salad!
*** For all you vegans, I found a really great vegan ricotta and it worked nicely!

2 comments:

  1. Everything from your mothers garden, fresh and delicious. I am sure it tasted wonderful and it looks rather homely. I love that kinda food for all the family to tuck into, and moreso made from scratch and with love.

    The colour of those tommy-tatoes is just so vibrant. I am so envious, this year we have only a handful of tomatoes growing in the garden, we are not optimistic. Oh how we miss our allotment and the greenhouses there.

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  2. Well you know it is sad. We planed to many things in our garden and had a great beginning, yet the Japanese Beatles hatched and ate literally everything.... We won't be canning much form our own garden this year which is really sad.

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