Spinach & Beef Spaghetti Pie

Spinach & Beef Spaghetti Pie

  

The garden has started producing again and my first spinach salad harvested from our garden plot just made my soul and my stomach happy. 

It looks like it will be a gangbuster season for spinach, so I decided to look at recipes that I could sneak a little – ok maybe a lot of spinach or Swiss chard – into.  The Farmer and the Mini Me like cooked spinach with lots of butter and a generous sprinkle of apple cider vinegar. I like it best in salads with hard boiled eggs, French dressing and a generous sprinkle of crushed Ritz crackers.  The Mini Farmer Boy has decided this spring “that he’s probably not going to like spinach … ever.” His words, not mine.

The food gauntlet was laid down with that statement. I think after serving this for super last week we can safely say the spinach score for Mom vs. Mini Farmer Boy is Mom 1, Mini 0.  I can’t wait for the next time he says that he doesn’t like something. I’m going for a nutritional three-peat on spinach with that kid this summer. I’m anticipating conceding a meal or two, because honestly I don’t have a lot of spinach recipes and I will probably make a meal or two that even I don’t like.  I’ll let you know how the next rounds go. 

I combined and adjusted two recipes for this dish.  I had developed a beef and spinach stuffed pasta shell recipe a few years ago and saw this recipe for a spaghetti pie and thought we should be able to pull it all together into something that everyone will like.  Seconds were had by all of us. I think it passed the family approval test. I should note that this is a best-when-hot-meal.  It warms up okay, but it loses a bit of the creaminess in the pasta layer after it sits in the fridge overnight. If you aren't a big family think about doing it in an 8x8 and freezing the second one or just cutting the recipe in half. 

The Groceries

1 Pound Ground Beef, well browned and drained

1 C Onion, finely chopped

½ T Minced garlic

1 C Sweet Peppers (yellow, red), finely chopped

1 pound fresh spinach, washed and rough chopped, you can leave the stems in your rough chop

1 container Ricotta Cheese

2 C Cottage Cheese

4 Cups Mozzarella Cheese Divided 1 C and 3 C

¼ C Parmesan cheese

2 eggs

2/3 C Milk

½ box of Angel Hair Pasta, cooked and drained according to directions (reserve 1 c of the cooking water)

1 Qt jar of your favorite Spaghetti Sauce – I love my recipe that was shared by my cooking friend Andrea, but when I run out of that I like Ragu’s chunky vegetable sauce

The Process

Sweat the onions, peppers and garlic in the ground beef       .

Add the spinach and sauté until it is wilted and the juices have evaporated.  If everything seems too dry you can add some of the pasta water.

Stir in the ricotta and cottage cheese and 1 C Mozzarella.

Set Meat mixture aside.

Beat the eggs into the milk.

Toss the noodles with the egg and milk mixture and Parmesan cheese.

Pack the noodles into the bottom of a greased, 9x13 glass baking dish.

Spread the meat mixture on top of the noodles. 

Top with the spaghetti sauce.

Bake uncovered at 350 for one hour or until the sauce is bubbly. 

Top with remaining cheese and bake for another 15minutes until the cheese is well melted, but not browned.

Let sit for 5-10 minutes and cut into squares to serve.

Mexican Stuffed Peppers

Mexican Stuffed Peppers

When I was engaged to the Farmer Boy I lived in a tiny apartment over a stairway just a block from my job selling advertising in a farm newspaper. It had three rooms.  A kitchen with a stove that barely fit a cake pan, a bathroom where I could stand at the sink and flush the toilet or start the shower and one all-purpose room.  I slept in my all purpose room, but it had a closet that I could stand in and do a full circle without touching a wall.

I loved that I could run to my place over the lunch hour to eat and could even take a nap or run some errands on the main business street. I didn’t love that the apartment walls were paper thin and I could hear every step on the stairs or as people walked down the hall.  I wasn’t crazy about the fact that I could smell really weird smells from the previous renters.  My landlord thought they had been building engines in the all purpose room…I suspect from the film on every surface and that the window blinds had been melted that they were probably cooking meth or something else in that apartment.  It was in that price range. 

That space was my own, but it sometimes felt like it was an isolated island in a town where I didn’t know many people and I was in lo-o-o-ve with the Farmer Boy so most evenings I would drive out to his house and make supper there.  It was probably one of my favorite times in our dating relationship.  I wasn’t responsible for anything other than the mess I made cooking and we didn’t have to hurry to eat.

I discovered how much I loved to cook real meals for someone who was hungry and that playing around with recipes was a great way to decompress from a job that was stressful.  I also started to learn about the food traditions my Farmer Boy was bringing to our relationship and future marriage.

I learned about stuffed meatloaf (I haven’t gotten that one down yet), cooked peppers, tenderloins, chicken noodle soup, fried potatoes, dried beef gravy and Welch’s Grape juice (the thick Concord grape kind) on vanilla pudding. These were foreign foods to me and they weren’t presented anywhere in my stash of church and community cookbooks. 

I’ve tried to learn how to make some of these family meals because they preserve part of my husband’s family tradition. I don’t think that my recipes or technique are always like the original recipes because I came to this marriage with my own food heritage. As I learn new techniques and dishes, I think that I’m developing a unique food heritage for our kiddos.

One recipe that has morphed from the Farmer Boy’s heritage is Mexican Stuffed Peppers.  This is a great make ahead dish that can be done a day ahead or weeks ahead and frozen.  It is a great way to use leftover taco meat or a crush of peppers from the garden and can even be done in smaller sweet or hot peppers for a hot appetizer. If using gluten free salsa and my taco mix it can be a great main dish for gluten sensitive guests.

Mike’s Mexican Stuffed Peppers – Makes 6-8 servings

The Groceries:

3-4 Bell Peppers

1 pound taco meat (you can find our family’s favorite homemade taco seasoning mix here)

1 can Black Beans, rinsed

1 cup cooked rice

2 Cups of your favorite salsa

2 Cups Fine Shredded Sharp Cheddar Cheese

For garnishes, green onions, corn chips and sour cream

The Process:

Make your taco meat with your favorite seasoning mix (you can find ours here).

Stir together the meat, beans, rice and salsa.

Cut the bell peppers in half from the stem to the bottom and clean out the seeds and membranes.

Fill the pepper cups with the meat mixture and place in a lightly greased baking dish.

Top with shredded cheddar cheese.

Spray a sheet of tinfoil so the cheese doesn’t stick and cover the baking dish.

Bake at 350 for at least an hour.  If you like a firmer pepper texture this may be enough, we usually cook ours for 1 ½ - 2 hours if they are unfrozen because we like our peppers to be pretty soft.

Garnish with sour cream sliced green onion and corn chips.  We serve ours with a lettuce salad.