Saturday, December 22, 2007

Spinach Pete (pronounced “pee-tay”)

Serves 6 to 8

Brighten up your holiday spirit with a yummy little snack for you and your family. This recipe is great to sneak in some iron and vitamins for kids. Sometimes children turn down vegetables. Pete is a name I came up with for this dish. I grew up in Morris Park, a neighborhood in the Bronx with a large Albanian community and in Albanian pete means “spun dough”. This recipe will keep your kids asking for more just in the matter of time. The cheese can also be substituted with tofu for vegans or those who are lactose intolerant. Sliced pete makes for a great hors devour guaranteed to be the hit of any party.

You will need:

  • 1 large mixing bowl
  • 1 hand or kitchen towel
  • 1 pizza pan or cookie sheet
  • 1 plastic container (large enough to hold 1 lb. of pizza dough)
Ingredients:
  • 1 lb. of frozen or refrigerated pizza dough
  • 5-8 oz. of frozen or canned spinach
  • 4 oz. of crumbled feta cheese
  • 8 oz. of cream cheese
  • 2 cloves of garlic
  • 10 oz. of shredded mozzarella whole or skin milk
  • 1 medium-sized onion
  • 3 tablespoons of any oil (olive, corn, canola, vegetable, peanut, etc.)
  • 22 oz. of tofu (if you are substituting cheese)
Preparation:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Start by defrosting the spinach and if necessary, the pizza dough. Once defrosted, place the pizza dough in a plastic container with the olive oil poured inside the container. Let the dough sit in the oil for about a half hour flipping it over to make sure both sides are coated with the oil. Take the spinach and wrap it in a kitchen or hand towel and squeeze all of the water out of the spinach. This technique works well because the towel gets almost all of the moisture out and soaks it up so you don’t get spinach water on your hands or clothes.

In a large mixing bowl combine the feta, mozzarella, and cream cheese. Reserve about 3 oz. of mozzarella cheese on the side for the top of your pete. Chop the onion and garlic finely and place it into the bowl. Add the drained spinach into the bowl and cover the bowl with clear wrap and leave it in the refrigerator for about 30 minutes or until chilled. By now your spinach/cheese compound should look like this.

Remove the now oil-soaked dough from the container and smooth it out over the cookie sheet, spreading it out into a flat circle as if you were making a pizza. It doesn't have to be a perfect circle, so don't go nuts trying to get it right. Scoop out the cheese/spinach mixture from the bowl and place it in the center of the dough. Spread the mixture out so that it covers all of the dough except for the edges of the circle. Then roll the dough up as if you were rolling up a jelly roll or a burrito. It should look like this.

After rolling the pete up into a very long tube shape, tuck the ends together to make the pete form into a ring. It should look like a big doughnut or a bunt cake. Make sure the height is even all around to prevent one side of the pete from cooking faster than the other. Again, we're not aiming for complete perfection, so it just needs to be even enough. Glaze the top of the pete with oil and lightly sprinkle 1/4 cup of mozzarella on top of the pete as a garnish. Bake for 25-30 minutes until golden brown. Pete is best served when warm and can be sliced up like a cake.

Serving suggestions: Don't let that hole in the middle of the pete go to waste! You can fill that empty space with baby tomatoes, like I did in the picture. Another cool idea could be placing some parsley for presentation, a small bowl of ranch dressing with a teaspoon to scoop it up and pour over individual pete pieces.

If you try this recipe, drop me a comment a let me know how it worked for you. Also, let me know how you served the pete. The limit is literally bound by your own imagination.

Saturday, December 15, 2007

Cooking With Courage

Hi, my name is Melissa and this is my ItaliaRican Kitchen. The name comes from my Italian (Sicilian to be exact) and Puerto Rican heritage, which is reflected in my cooking. Those who are familiar with Italians and Puerto Ricans know that they both come from very family-oriented cultures. So it should be no surprise that helping with family meals was how I discovered my love for cooking as a child. My mother, aunts and cousins would enlist me to pour this and mix that, stir this and measure that until the meal was fully prepared to be enjoyed by everyone.

It was in the kitchen with my family, not a cookbook where I learned and came up with so many recipes for delicious meals. My family also taught me that that cooking is not cooking unless you get your hands dirty. Growing up in the Bronx, we didn’t always money to buy all sorts of different ingredients, so I had to use my imagination to come up with creative ways to prepare meals, especially meals without meat or other expensive ingredients.

Cooking is also like therapy for me. It soothes me after a stressful day and allows me to be in total control in a world where so many of us feel out of control. It also pleases me to watch others enjoying what I’ve created. Anyone who’s ever eaten my cooking asks me, “Can you give me the recipe?” or “Can you make this for my party?” There’s nothing like a cascade of compliments to make a girl feel better.

My Sicilian mother and her family taught me all the delicious sauces, gravies and pasta recipes which graced their dining table. With the large Puerto Rican and Dominican communities in the Bronx, my neighbors and friends shared their recipes and culinary traditions with me over the years. My father, a Puerto Rican Jew, was not really into cooking and therefore did not share any recipes from either aspect of his own heritage. But I can whip up a mean latke and matzo ball soup.

I want to make this blog an encyclopedia of my best recipes, ideas and tips. People are also surprised how inexpensive and quick my cooking is to make. Once in a while I’ll throw in a cooking anecdote from my past, little experiences which have contributed to my wisdom in the kitchen.

My motto is "cooking with courage" because I believe too many people are afraid of cooking. They're too scared of what might happen if they turn on the stove and put together a few ingredients. I don't believe you're really cooking unless you get your hands dirty. No one should be afraid to cook, and more important, no one should be afraid to get their hands dirty. Whether you get your hands greasy, sticky, or gooey, just remember two things: (1) soap and water will always wash anything off your hands and (2) it's just FOOD!! It's going to be eaten eventually so how horrible could it possibly be to get on your hands?

With that said, let's get cooking!