A Great Use for Silverbeet

If there's one thing it seems everyone can grow here (at has a glut of) it's silverbeet. At present we have also got lots of both types of spinach too, so I've combined them all to make up this recipe from a great 80's cookbook - Jan Bilton's "The Great New Zealand Cookbook".

SPINACH QUICHE

this is what 500g of spinach looks like - it will take care of the glut.

500g spinach
25g butter
salt and freshly ground pepper
1 tsp sugar
1 cup cottage cheese
3 eggs, lightly beaten
4 tablespoons of parmesan cheese
4 tablespoons of cream (or substitute unsweetened yoghurt)
wholemeal pastry (recipe follows)

Wash the spinach well, drain, trim and chop coarsely. Cook in butter with salt, pepper and sugar.
Beat cottage cheese and eggs until smooth. Add cheese and cream. Combine with spinach then spread the mixture into the prepared pastry case.
Bake at 190c for 35 minutes.

Spinach Quiche. Got all excited and ate half of it before I remembered that I was going to take a photo

WHOLEMEAL PASTRY CRUST

2 cups of wholemeal flour
1 tsp salt
1/2 cup corn oil (or whatever you have - I used ricebran)
1/4 cup of cold milk

Place flour and salt in a bowl and mix well. Pour in oil and milk. Stir until lightly mixed, pressing any crumbly pieces back in.
Form pastry into a ball and flatten. Roll out between 2 pieces of baking paper to fit a 20 - 23cm pie plate
Now this is where the recipe and I part company...it is one of those bake blind pastries that I can't be bothered with, so I just whack the filling in and cook it immediately and it comes out fine. However if you want to stick to the rules...
Chill the case for 1 hour then cover with tin foil.
Bake 20 - 30 minutes at 200c (really??!) until browned. 

Just a peek at how our potatoes and corn are coming along.

potato and corn patch

We ran out of soil to mound over the potatoes so have piled kikuyu clippings around them. (Those clippings had better not grow)
The corn is mulched with newspaper and lawn clippings. 

There's so much to do at this time of the year that some of my good intentions have flown out of the window. I think from now on any handmade items for Christmas need to be done by August or it's just not going to happen, as I get too busy with the garden in Spring and the band starts to get busy too. Ah well...there's always next year.