Greens and Pea Manicotti

Use your favorite greens to make Greens and Pea Manicotti, a lovely savory vegetarian main course of crepes filled with peas, goat cheese, ricotta and, of course, greens, covered in a fragrant tomato sauce.

When my elder daughter came home from university the first summer after her freshman year, she surprised me with the news that she had become a vegetarian. But I guess I really wasn't that surprised since I knew that her new best friends were mostly vegetarian and that sort of thing rubs off on a person.

When her little sister followed in her footsteps, not just to the same school, but into vegetarianism, no surprise at all there. Frankly, I think it's a great thing - I'm not ready to go there yet, but I fully supported their choice. Neither of them is completely vegetarian these days, but we do eat more meatless meals because I discovered during those years that there are many delightful recipes without it.

Several years ago, while I was researching recipes on the internet, I came across what sounded like a rich, satisfying vegetarian dish and I couldn't wait to give it a try. I had to make a few changes because of what I had available but it was very tasty and I've made it again since.

It would be perfect for a Meatless Monday dinner or a Lenten meal for those who fast from meat, whether all month or just on Fridays. If you are looking for more meatless casserole recipes, make sure to scroll down and check out the link list from my Sunday Supper friends.

Greens and Pea Manicotti

My greens and pea manicotti is adapted from this recipe here. I love her writing. She's funny and she has great recipes so go check her out. Here's my favorite post!

Ingredients
For the filling:
3 oz or 85g goat cheese
4 1/2 oz or 125g fresh ricotta or small curd cottage cheese
5 oz or 140g raw greens of your choice (spinach, kale, silver beets, etc.)
6 oz or 180g frozen peas, thawed
1 large clove garlic
1 whole egg
Zest of one lemon
Black pepper
1/2 teaspoon salt
4 oz or 225g freshly grated Parmesan
1/4 cup or 60ml whipping cream
Sea salt
Black pepper

For assembly:
1 1/2 cups or 240ml tomato sauce – store bought will work if you have a favorite or make this sauce, from my eggplant parmigiana recipe. It freezes very nicely so the extra will come in handy for future meals.
10 6-inch or 12cm crêpes (recipe here)
1 oz or 55g freshly grated Parmesan

Method
Clean your greens thoroughly and remove any thick stems. Rinse them at least three times.

These are silver beet greens but I've also made this with kale.

Yes, I know the package might say pre-washed. It’s lying to you. Just like when I told my mother I had vacuumed but I really just ran the vacuum cleaner around to make the lines on the shag carpet without turning it on. (Fact: The vacuum cleaner is much easier to move when it’s not sucking.)

Steam the greens for several minutes with the lid on.

Remove and cool by immersing in some cool water. Spin them dry in a salad spinner or a dry tea towel. If they still feel too wet, give them a squeeze with your two hands.

Using a fork, break your goat cheese and ricotta up into small crumbles. Chop your clove of garlic.

Add the greens, peas and garlic to your food processor and pulse. If you hear a clank, clank, clank at this point, realize that your peas are still frozen.

Pour the whole mess into a microwaveable bowl and thaw properly this time. Jeez. Okay, try again. You are looking for a rough mixture that still has lumps and bumps.

Now add the lemon zest and Parmesan to your other cheeses.

In a bowl big enough for thorough stirring, add the cheese mixture to the greens and pea mixture. Sprinkle on your salt and pepper. Give it a good stir. Taste it and add more salt, if necessary.

Now add the egg and stir again.

Add the cream and stir again. Your filling is ready and just needs to hang out for a while in the refrigerator to allow the flavors to develop.

Time to get on with the tomato sauce and the crêpes. By the time you have those two done, the filling should be ready to use. Follow these two recipes here and here. Make double the crêpe recipe and you can easily half the tomato sauce. Or make the full batch and freeze some. Go ahead, get on with them. We’ll wait here.

Just twiddling while we wait.

Okay, so, when you are ready to fill your crêpes and bake, preheat oven to 350°F or 180°C. Spray a little Pam in your baking dish or drizzle in a little olive oil and rub it around. Cover the bottom of your pan with about a 1/2 cup or 120ml of your tomato sauce.

Put about a 1/4 cup or 60ml of filling on the top crêpe and spread it along the middle. Fold one side over and then the other side.

Lay it in the pan, ends side down. Continue filling the crêpes until all the filling is gone. Extra crêpes can be wrapped in cling film and frozen.

Top the manicotti with another cup or 240ml of tomato sauce and then a good sprinkling of freshly grated Parmesan.

Bake for about 30-40 minutes or until the sauce and cheese are bubbling. Serve with a side green salad or vegetable of our choice.

Enjoy!

Meatless Meals for Lent

• Asparagus, Goat Cheese, and Fresh Herb Bread Pudding by Wholistic Woman
• Baked Eggplant Parmesan Casserole by Jersey Girl Cooks
• Baked Mushroom Fettuccine by Delaware Girl Eats
• Cheesy Mushroom Marsala Pasta Casserole by Hot Eats and Cool Reads
• Greens and Pea Manicotti by Food Lust People Love
• Leek and Swiss Chard Gratin by Caroline’s Cooking
• Mushroom Breakfast Casserole by Brunch-n-Bites
• Raisin Bread Cheddar Strata by Pies and Plots
• Ricotta Pasta Frittata by A Kitchen Hoor’s Adventures
• Roasted Vegetable Lasagna by A Day in the Life on the Farm
• Tex Mex Vegetarian Bake Freestyle Recipe by Positively Stacey
• Spaghetti Squash Parmesan Casserole by Cindy’s Recipes and Writings
• Spinach Ravioli Bake by Our Good Life
• Spinach Ricotta Pasta Bake by The Bitter Side of Sweet
• Tuna Noodle Casserole from Scratch by That Skinny Chick Can Bake
• Vegetarian Baked Pasta with Spinach and Gruyère by Cooking Chat
• Vegetarian Enchiladas Recipe with Chickpea Curry by Sunday Supper Movement
• Vegetarian Shepherd’s Pie by Simple and Savory
• Veggie & Quinoa Baked Stuffed Peppers by Hardly A Goddess

Pin it!

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Zucchini-Wrapped Cheesy Pea Burgers #FoodieExtravaganza

Fresh peas, goat cheese and Parmesan seasoned with garlic, lemon zest and loads of fresh basil make a flavorful patty, even before wrapping in zucchini and grilling!

This month I am hosting the Foodie Extravaganza party and so I have the privilege of choosing the food holiday we are going to celebrate. I had a look at the calendar and couldn’t even consider any of the other options when I saw that May is National Hamburger Month! Perfect for writing about a great recipe that I made last summer and have just been itching to share. Finally, it’s getting to be grilling weather again in the rest of the northern hemisphere!

Now burgers don’t have to be beef! Or even meat. There are a lot of wonderful tasty vegetables and legumes that can be made into patties, grilled and popped on a bun. I make a mean lentil burger, for instance, with cooked Puy lentils, mozzarella and smoked paprika. But this recipe is pretty much straight out of the Waitrose supermarket magazine which they were giving out free at the checkout when we were in the Channel Islands. The original ingredient list called for specific store products, like Waitrose British Blacktail eggs. Well, I don’t know my laying hen varieties but I figure, when it comes to eggs, any fresh one, preferably free range, will do.

Make sure to scroll on down to the bottom of my recipe to see all the great hamburger recipes we have for you today! And happy National Hamburger Month!

Ingredients - makes four patties
5 1/3 oz or 150g fresh hulled peas, blanched
2 1/2 oz or 70g soft goat's cheese
1 egg
1 clove garlic
Good bunch fresh basil, leaves picked from the stems
3 1/2 oz or 100g fresh breadcrumbs
1 oz or 30g Parmigiano Reggiano, grated
Grated zest 1 lemon
8 oz or 2 medium zucchini or courgettes
Olive oil, for brushing on before grilling

To serve: four buns, tomato, mayonnaise, sliced purple onion or any of your other favorite burger toppings

Method
Put your peas, goat cheese, egg and garlic and in a big bowl and blend it all together until smooth with a hand blender. Or use a food processor.

Add in the fresh breadcrumbs and blend (or process) again.

Next the basil leaves go in.

Then the Parmesan and lemon zest.

Thinly slice the zucchini with a potato peeler.

Arrange them into crosses on a large piece of parchment paper on your work surface. My zucchini must have been shorter than the ones they used in the magazine because I had to overlap them in the middle to wrap all the way around.

Form your cheesy pea mixture into four patties and lay one on each of zucchini crosses. Lay a final slice of zucchini on each one and fold the ends under the patty.

Fold the rest of the slices up and over the patty. They may not be pretty but they will be tasty.

Put these, covered in cling film, into the refrigerator until you are ready to grill.

When you are ready to grill, light the charcoal and leave it until the coals are white and heat is uniform.

Brush one side of the patties with olive oil and lay each patty, oil side down, on a small square of aluminum foil. Brush the tops with oil.

Place these on the grill and cook for about four or five minutes.

Check that the underside of the patties are browning nicely.

Turn the patties over and carefully peel off the foil.

Cook on that side until the patties are nicely browned.

Turn the patties a couple of more times to make sure they are browned evenly and are cooked through.

Serve on toasted buns with mayonnaise, sliced tomato and onion.

Enjoy!

And my husband is so good on the Weber that I asked him to grill baby gem lettuces and I made this salad to go along side the burger. Isn't it pretty?

Check out all the delicious burgers we have for you today!

• Cheeseburger in Paradise by The Freshman Cook
• French Onion Burgers by Cindy's Recipes and Writings
• Frita Cubana (Cuban Hamburger) by Tara's Multicultural Table
• Guacamole Bacon Burger by Fearlessly Creative Mammas
• Maw-Maw's Hamburger Surprise by Cooking With Carlee
• Mushroom Veggie Burgers with Roasted Tomato Mayo by The Joyful Foodie
• Pineapple and Bacon Burgers with Candied Jalapeños by Sew You Think You Can Cook
• Spiced Lamb Burgers with Pomegranate Chutney and Mint-Pistachio Pesto by Culinary Adventures with Camilla
• Sweet and Smoky Bacon Cheddar Burger by A Day in the Life on the Farm
• Thai Turkey Burgers with Siracha Mayo by Our Good Life
• Western Bacon Burgers with BBQ Mayo and Crispy Onion Straws by Making Miracles
• Zucchini-wrapped Cheesy Pea Burgers by Food Lust People Love

Foodie Extravaganza is where we celebrate obscure food holidays or cook and bake together with the same ingredient or theme each month. This month we celebrate National Hamburger Month by serving up burgers of all kinds.

Posting day is always the first Wednesday of each month. If you are a blogger and would like to participate in the next Foodie Extravaganza, just go to our Facebook page to join. We would love to have you!

Follow our Foodie Extravaganza Pinterest board for past events and more deliciousness!

Pea and Bacon Risotto

As author Stephanie Le says, once you have the technique down, risotto is quick and easy to make. Best of all, a good basic risotto recipe can be customized to suit your own taste. This version with crispy bacon and peas, from her recently released cookbook, Easy Gourmet, is an ideal starting point.

As a cookbook junkie, it’s hard to resist the offer of a new cookbook, especially when it’s gorgeous and written by a fellow blogger who I am half in love with. I say only half because the awe gets in the way. I mean, really! Have you met Stephanie Le of I am a Food Blog yet? Her dishes are gorgeous! The flavors, the textures, the styling, the props! It’s no wonder that she won the Editors’ Choice Award and Blog of the Year (!) from Saveur magazine this year. So I love her like some people love famous movie stars. It’s love tinged with the sad and certain knowledge that it will no doubt remain unrequited. But that’s okay, because I can still stalk her online and in the pages of her beautiful book with its easy to follow, deliciously different recipes.

Stephanie’s lovely book is called Easy Gourmet – Awesome Recipes Anyone Can Cook. < That there is an Amazon affiliate link in case you can’t wait and want to order your own, but go have a look at the book on Stephanie’s site as well right here. Isn’t it beautiful? Even more awe-inspiring is that she designed every part of it as well! I am in full on food blogger crush mode.

The hardest part about cookbook blog tours for me is making the recipe as it is written because I am not a very good recipe follower. But how can I tell you a recipe is wonderful if I haven’t actually made it properly? So I have to discipline myself and follow the instructions. In the case of this risotto, I changed only two things.

I couldn’t find thick cut bacon here so I used six slices of the normal stuff, hoping the weight would be about the same. And since I had to start by frying my bacon till crispy, and I was going to use the same saucepan to cook the risotto, I used an equal amount of bacon fat in place of the butter and oil to sauté the onions and toast the rice. That said, I’m going to leave the ingredient list and recipe exactly as it is in the book, so you can do it Stephanie’s way. I recommend you use the weights if possible as they are the most accurate way to make sure you have the right proportion of rice to peas and cheese.

Recipe printed with permission from Page Street Publishing. Any adaptations are in parentheses.

Ingredients
4 1⁄2 cups or 1L chicken stock
1 tablespoon or 15g butter
1 teaspoon or 5ml oil
1 cup or 228g Arborio rice
1⁄2 small onion, diced
1⁄2 cup or 64g frozen peas, thawed
4 slices cooked thick-cut bacon, cut in 1-inch or 2 1/2cm pieces
1⁄4 cup or 45g freshly grated Parmesan

Method
In a medium stockpot, heat the stock to a gentle simmer. (Stephanie advises that warming the stock first is essential to making great risotto.)

Melt the butter with the oil in a medium saucepan over medium heat. Add the diced onions and cook until translucent, 1-2 minutes.

Turn the heat up to medium-high and add the rice.

Toast the rice, about 3-4 minutes, until slightly translucent.

Turn the heat down to medium and add a ladle of hot stock.

Stir into the rice until the liquid is mostly absorbed.

Continue stirring and adding hot stock as the rice absorbs it.

Taste after about 15 minutes.

If the rice is soft but with a bit of bite, it’s ready. (Mine took quite a bit longer but I think I had my fire lower than medium.)

If still uncooked, continue adding stock a ladle at a time. (You might not use all the stock.)

When done, remove from the heat and stir in the peas, bacon and cheese.

Taste and season with salt and pepper. Enjoy immediately. (We added our own pepper sauce, because we love things spicy but, with the saltiness of the Parmesan, a special wedge my husband brought back from Italy, additional salt was not necessary.)

Enjoy!

If you’d like to try out a few more recipes from this amazing book, here’s a list of the links so far on the blog book tour. That cod is next on my list to try, followed closely by the hot wings. Or maybe the mushrooms. Seriously, you all, everything looks so good!

• Carrot Cake Pancakes from Wit and Vinegar 
• Chai Tea Ice Box Cake from The Faux Martha
• Hot Wings from Half Baked Harvest 
• Miso-Glazed Cod from The Pancake Princess 

*Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links to the book, Easy Gourmet – Awesome Recipes Anyone Can Cook.  If you buy after clicking on my link, I make some small change from the sale and you are still charged the normal price. I received a copy of this book for review purposes, with no other personal compensation. All opinions are entirely my own.

Pasta with Creamed Yogurt Peas and Feta

A simple one dish meal, big on flavor and so satisfying, this creamy pasta with peas and yogurt is topped with toasted chili pine nuts which add a pop of color and welcome hit of heat.

I read this post on Orangette some time last year and wasted little time before taking Molly’s advice and making this dish. I had every intention of making it again while in Providence visiting my daughter for spring break because this is just the sort of dish she’d love. Sadly, we never did get around to it but, as I head back to Dubai, I figured it was time to share. So she can make it when I’m gone.

Ingredients
1 1/2 cups or 400g whole-milk yogurt
1/4 cup or 60ml olive oil
2 medium cloves garlic
1 pound or 500g fresh or thawed frozen peas
1 teaspoon flakey sea salt (I use Maldon. If you use fine grain sea salt, use a 1/2 teaspoon.)
1 teaspoon smoked paprika
Scant 1/2 cup or 60g pine nuts
2 teaspoons Sichuan peppercorns or crushed red pepper
1 lb or 500g dried pasta
8 ounces or 240g feta cheese

Method
Process the 2/3 cup or 100g of the peas and the garlic with the yogurt and half of the olive oil in a food processor or with a hand blender until smooth and creamy.

 Transfer the mixture to a large mixing bowl, add in the salt and smoked paprika and stir.

In a small saucepan, over a medium fire, sauté the pine nuts and Sichuan peppercorns in the remaining olive oil.

Turn the fire off as the pine nuts start to turn slightly golden and remove the pan from the heat. They will color a little bit more as they cool.

Meanwhile, cook your pasta is lightly salted water according to the package instructions, adding the balance of the peas to the pot when the pasta has just a minute or two left in cooking time.

While your pasta is boiling along merrily, crumble your feta with a fork.

Drain the pasta and peas in a colander. Add the hot pasta/peas a little at a time to the bowl with the yogurt pea sauce and stir well between each addition. Molly says that adding it all at once could cause the sauce to separate so definitely don’t dump it all in.

Add in the crumbled feta and stir.

Serve each bowl topped with a spoon or two of the toasted pine nuts and a drizzle of the chili oil.

Enjoy!