The Funky Kitchen

It’s a little bit strange to look back at it, but today is the hundredth post at The Funky Kitchen. Adding a triple digit feels both an accomplishment and anticlimactic. Either way, it’s been a lot of fun cooking up a storm and getting to know the blogging community, so here’s to the next hundred posts!

Because we are celebrating, I thought we should have some tasty nibble-y party food. Try some spanakopita!

Spanakopita

(a recipe adapted from Dorothy Minish’s Spanakopita)

10 oz fresh spinach

1/2 Cup fresh parsley

1/4 Cup fresh dill

1 Cup cottage cheese

1 onion

2 garlic cloves

4 eggs

1 Cup feta cheese

1- 1 lb package phyllo pastry

1 Cup butter

Directions

• Finely chop all of your greens: the spinach, parsley and dill.

• Place the cottage cheese in a strainer set over a bowl, so that some of the moisture will drip away.
• Chop the onion and garlic cloves and saute in a pan over medium heat until the onions go translucent (~5 minutes).
• To the chopped greens, add the eggs and drained cottage cheese as well as the onion mixture. Next, crumble in the feta cheese.
• Mix everything together, this will be the spanakopita filling. Set it over a strainer so that excess moisture can drain. (Note: As an alternative, you can leave the filling as is and mix into it a 1/2 Cup of uncooked rice. The rice will absorb moisture while the spanakopita is baking and cook through.)
• Remove the phyllo from it’s package, and cover it with a damp tea towel while you aren’t using it so that it will not dry out as you work.

• Melt your butter.
• Cut the stack of phyllo into 4 or 5 lengthwise strips.
• Working one strip at a time, brush butter over your piece of phyllo pastry. (Or roll it on with a small foam roller that you haven’t used for anything else.) Spoon about a half tablespoon of the filling onto one end of the phyllo strip, and bundle it up as follows:

• Repeat, repeat… and repeat some more.

The recipe made 2 pans like this

• Bake your spanakopita in a 350° oven for ~18 minutes until it is golden brown.
• Serve to your hungry guests!

Use fresh spinach, not frozen, for this recipe. For people who think it’s too much trouble to clean and sort through fresh spinach, Dorothy advises that if the spinach you have requires anything more than rinsing it isn’t of good enough quality to bother with anyway.

Deviled eggs make me want to party. This is probably because of where I tend to consume them; a particular Auntie of mine always has deviled eggs at parties, and so they make me think of gatherings, birthdays and holidays. She makes a mean deviled egg, too.

Why are they called deviled eggs? My reading tells me that a ‘deviled’ food tends to refer to a food spiced with the hot seasonings cayenne or mustard. Also, the concept of the deviled egg has apparently been around for quite a while.

In making these, I learned a thing or two about myself, first that if you are impatient and do not let the eggs cool entirely, the shells will not peel off very easily, and second that I am rather impatient. Luckily, after I made a mess of the first few, I figured out it would be best if I just waited. It really does make a great difference.

I don't own a piping bag. I just use a resealable bag and cut off one of the corners. You can control how much comes out by how much you cut off, and you don't need to wash it when you're done.

Deviled Eggs

12 eggs

1/3 Cup mayonnaise

2 tsp Dijon mustard

2 tsp fresh dill, chopped

1/4 tsp salt

paprika, for dusting

Directions

Hard boil the eggs (not sure how to do that? Check here). Let them cool completely; keeping them immersed in cold water for a while helps the process along swimmingly. Gently remove the shells, preserving the hard boiled egg’s roundness, and discard. Using a knife, cut each egg into halves longitudinally, so that the halves are symmetrical. Scoop out the beautiful yolks into a bowl, and set the whites aside. To the bowl with the yolks, add the mayonnaise, mustard, salt and dill, and mash until everything is smooth and combined. Scoop the yolk mixture into a piping bag, or a resealable plastic bag with the tip of one corner cut off (no one will be able to tell the difference), and pipe the yolk into the wells left in the whites. Sprinkle with paprika, and serve. Keep refrigerated if not serving immediately.

They certainly did taste like a party! Some were casualties to my impatient peeling of the shells and some became casualties of freezing, the fridge seems to be set too cold, but the ones that made it to the table? Fantastic.

Mr. says: deviled eggs are delicious, and that they aren’t so difficult that a person shouldn’t make them.

… too much to say about the new house other than that we’ve got it, are working on it and pictures are coming soon. For the meantime, more potatoes!

These potatoes always remind me of spring. I know it’s odd to be writing about spring in August, but the little baby potatoes (I didn’t know they still came in baby size this late) just called out to be made into this. So, talking about spring in August:

My Baba has a giant garden that takes up half of her yard. It is reminiscent of her giant garden while she and my grandpa were still living on the farm. That was a truly large garden. In the spring, when she knew that the potato plants had had just enough time to grow, she would uproot a plant. And it would be redolent with the tiniest, tastiest baby potatoes. The first ones of the year to come out of the garden.

Much to the style of my Baba, they were prepared very simply, with only a couple of basic ingredients. But with the love involved with cooking for your family, and working with ingredients that you grew in your garden, simple and basic gets elevated into a pretty fantastic dish. No sir, these aren’t humble potatoes!

Baby Potatoes with Dill and Butter

(the way Baba makes them)

1 1/2 lbs of baby potatoes

2 Tbsp butter

A handful of dill (~1/4 Cup), chopped

Salt and pepper to taste

• Wash and scrub the potatoes.
• Boil the potatoes in a pot of salted water until soft all the way through and a fork is easily inserted into the bigger ones.
• Drain off the water.
• Put the pot that you boiled the potatoes in back on the element and add the butter to the pot, allowing it to melt but not brown.
• Add the dill to the butter, and then immediately after add the potatoes.
• Toss to coat the potatoes with the butter and dill.
• Season with salt and pepper to taste and enjoy! If you’ve got some sour cream on hand, feel free to add a dollop on top, but they are certainly just as good without.