Baked eggs with tomato sauce and spinach

I've been using a lovely tomato sauce recipe I discovered recently for a bunch of different stuff. It is very nice. This time, I've used it for baked eggs. Although I made it in one casserole dish this morning, it works better if you have small single-portion pots that you can cook the eggs in.

Serves about 4

2 onions, thinly diced
2 cloves garlic, minced
2 red peppers, diced
1 chilli (or to taste), finely diced
2 tbsp red wine vinegar
1/2 tsp sugar
1 tsp Provencal spice
2 x 400 g tins diced tomatoes
200 g spinach, stalks removed and roughly chopped
Salt and pepper
6 eggs (in small pots) or 4 eggs (in a casserole dish)
crusty bread to serve

Heat the oven to 180 degrees. Fry the onions, garlic, peppers, and chilli until the onion is translucent. Add the wine vinegar, mix in, and then add the sugar, Provencal spice, and tomatoes. Simmer for about 20 minutes, stirring occasionally. While you wait, put the spinach in a colander and pour boiling water over it to wilt it. When it has cooled down, squeeze out excess water and, when the tomato sauce is done, add to the tomato sauce and then spoon into the pots or casserole dish. Make a small hole, or put a spoon in the tomato mix in a pot so that the is a bit of a depression in the sauce. Crack an egg on top of the spoon, then push down so that the egg sinks in to the mixture a bit, and then remove. Do this for all the eggs. Shove the pots in the oven, and cook for about 15-20 minutes. Be careful if you're cooking in a casserole dish, as you'll need to cook for longer. It might be a good idea to heat the oven to 140 or so and cook for about 20-25 minutes. In any event, it'll be nice.

Serve with bread, and enjoy. The tomato sauce rocks.

Spinach and ricotta cannelloni

This one was introduced to us by a friend of mine who has given me several fantastic recipes over the years (including this one). He used lasagne instead of cannelloni originally, but we were told, in no uncertain terms, that this should be made using tubes.

Cannelloni, for those who are as ignorant as I was, is a long tubular type of pasta that you can stuff. Whatever you put into it gives it a lovely taste. This one was particularly good, and surprisingly easy once you've got the stuffing sorted. It also keeps very well in the freezer, although I've never left it for long enough to need to freeze it. Very recommend.

Ingredients:

olive oil
salt and pepper for seasoning
4 cloves garlic, minced
1 red onion, diced
chilli, to taste (optional)
1.5 tbsp sugar
1 tbsp red wine vinegar
2 tins (400g) chopped/diced tomatoes
1 or 2 red peppers, diced (optional)
handful of basil leaves
500 g mascarpone
3 tbsp milk
500 g spinach, hard stalks removed (baby spinach is better, but regular spinach works well too)
500 g ricotta
about 200 g parmesan cheese or equivalent
pinch of ground nutmeg
200-250 g cannelloni tubes (uncooked)
250 g (2 balls) mozzarella

Heat some olive oil in a frying pan and cook the garlic and onion (and chilli) for a minute or 2. Add the sugar, wine vinegar, tomatoes and peppers, season, and simmer for about 20 minutes, stirring occasionally until thickened. When ready, add the basil leaves, mix in, and pour the mixture into a shallow, medium-sized oven dish, which should be big enough to fit your cannelloni in one layer, maybe two if you have to.

Take the mascarpone, season with salt and pepper, and beat it together with the milk until smooth. This will be your sauce.

Place the spinach in a large colander and pour boiling water over to wilt (you may have to do this in batches). When it is cool enough to handle, squeeze the excess water out of the spinach, and roughly chop it quite small. Mix together with the ricotta and about half of the parmesan, and season with salt, pepper, and nutmeg.

Now comes the stuffing part. In order to do this, take a fairly strong plastic sandwich bag or a piping bag and put a couple of tablespoons' worth of the spinach mixture in. If you're using a sandwich bag, cut a corner off the bag, leaving a hole about 1-1.5 cm wide. Don't make it too big, otherwise you won't be able to do the next stage. With your bag and spinach mixture, take an uncooked cannellono (one cannelloni? Grammatically incorrect, I know, but so be it), fit the bag in one end and cover the other with a finger or two. I have found this (kind of) stops the mixture spurting out either end. Gently squeeze the bag to force the mixture into the cannelloni. If your spinach is too big, it'll get caught in the whole and it'll make the whole exercise quite difficult, so be careful with this. Lay the stuffed pasta side by side on the tomato sauce in the oven dish, trying to keep it all in one layer.

Once you have stuffed your pasta and laid them in the dish, spoon over the mascarpone layer and then sprinkle over the remaining parmesan and layer the mozzarella over the top. Put in the oven and cook at 180 degrees for 30-35 minutes. When ready, take out of the oven and leave for about 5 minutes. Serve with crusty bread and wine.

Very nice. Very recommend.

Homemade Bibimbap

We've got a Korean place around the corner from us, Gotsu, which is fantastic, but it's only open from 12.00 to 20.00, Monday to Friday, and only during the academic year. They make an awesome bibimbap though. I finally hunted down gochujang (Korean chilli paste) and I intend to use it all. Lots of bibimbap coming up. This is adapted from a recipe I found here, but do be careful about saltiness. The first batch I made was a touch on the saline side.

Ingredients (supposedly feeds 3):

Meat:
100g mince
0.5 tbsp soy sauce
1 tbsp sesame oil
1 tsp sugar
1-2 cloves minced garlic (or to taste)

Vegetables and rice: Use your best judgement
250g spinach (or other leafy vegetable)
Handful or 2 of bean sprouts
100g mushrooms thinly sliced
1-2 carrots, thinly sliced
Steamed rice (or, as I used, basmati)
4 eggs
Seaweed salad (Korean if you can, or goma wakame if you can't)

Chilli sauce:
2 tbsp (or more) gochujang
1 tbsp sesame oil
1 tbsp sugar
1/2 tbsp water
1/2 tsp vinegar
1-2 cloves minced garlic

Cook the rice early on. Mix the meat and marinade ingredients together and leave for about 30 min. Mix the sauce ingredients. Stir-fry the carrots and mushrooms for about 3-5 minutes, or until browned and cooked. Cook the meat for 3-5 minutes until cooked through. Fry an egg per person, soft yolks (recommended). Add rice to a bowl, then sauce, then meat, mushrooms, carrots, beansprouts, spinach, seaweed salad, and finally egg on top. Mix together and enjoy.

The best thing about this dish is that you can add whatever you want. It's a good way to use up leftover veg in the fridge. I've had it with cucumber, little radishes, and courgette. Basically, use your imagination.