Spinach Ravioli with Garlic Herb Olive Oil

Tuesday is my long day. I start work at 8 and finish at 5:30.  I know, that's a normal 8 hour job. I know that 8 hours should not be a big deal. I used to regularly have a couple of jobs at a time, but now I am a working wussy. China has 2 hour lunch breaks, early closing times, week and month long national vacations.... it's kinda of awesome.

But seriously, teaching can be a tiring job!

Often times, I love it. I'm especially enjoying teaching art this year and having that creativity back in my life. Sometimes, though, trying to get teenagers to understand the basics of oil painting 5 times in one day is enough to make you want to eat the fake still life fruit, just so it can end! Enough is enough! To top it off, Tuesdays, I have a meeting at 4 o'clock that could last anywhere between 1 and 2 hours. The meetings are often fruitless and circular and by the time I get out of there I need to go do something I want to do.

Last Tuesday, I wanted flowers, so I bought some.  I wanted to eat spinach for dinner, so I bought some. I wanted rose tea when I got home, so I had some. When I got home, I rummaged in my fridge to figure out what to make. You see, for some reason, it's rare for me to actually have a totally thought out plan for dinner. This often results in my boyfriend worriedly asking me if we're ever going to eat dinner, or what exactly it is that I'm making. So last Tuesday, I had spinach and then I saw mushrooms and  jiaozi wrappers and immediately thought, ravioli. I made mushroom ravioli with thyme and breadcrumbs, and I made spinach ravioli and egg. I was a little worried that the egg would be weird or the the combo too boring. It was anything but.

These ravioli are delicious.  They are garlicky, earthy and truly rich tasting despite having zero cheese or dairy  whatsoever. I think they'd be great with Pasta Pomodoro, but I just ate them with a drizzle of some herb garlic olive oil and a sprinkle of parmesan.

Spinach Ravioli with Herb Garlic Olive Oil

Ingredients:
For the Ravioli:
A pack of potsticker wrappers, the thickest you can find, or fresh sheets of pasta dough (I used about 40)
A ton of spinach
3-4 cloves of garlic, minced
1/2 a medium red onion, finely diced
salt and pepper
1 egg, beaten

For the Oil:
1/2 cup olive oil, fruity is okay
a large pinch of rosemary
a large pinch of oregano (or italian herb mix)
a medium pinch of red pepper flakes
a medium pinch of kosher salt
a tiny pinch of cinnamon
3 black peppercorns
1 clove of garlic, minced

Directions:

1. Grab all your ingredients. Trim off some of the spinach stems and rinse thoroughly. Chop finely. (Finer than I did, please!)

2. Prepare the Herb Oil: In a mortar and pestle, add all of the dry ingredients (meaning, not the olive oil or the garlic). Crush until very fine. Mince the garlic. Combine the ingredients in a small bowl to allow the flavors to meld.

3. Prepare the Filling: Dice the onion and mince the garlic. Add 1 tbsp of olive oil to a pan and heat over medium. Add onions and cook for 1-2 minutes to soften. Add garlic. Be careful to adjust according to your particular stove's heating, you don't want to burn the garlic! Season with salt and fresh ground pepper, maybe even a little nutmeg if you want to be interesting.

4. Set the spinach aside to cool just a bit, about 8 minutes. In a bowl, beat the egg. Add a small amount of the spinach mixture and stir to make sure the egg won't curdle when you add it all. Then, gradually add more and more of the spinach to the egg until all combined.




5. Fill the Ravioli: Set yourself with a little ravioli assembly line. You'll need your wrappers, a spoon, a fork, a little bowl of water and a little bowl of flour. Here are the steps:

Form a small bowl shape with the wrapper in your fingers. Brush just a tiny bit of water on the edge of the wrapper.

With a spoon add just a small amount, about a teaspoon, of the filling to the middle of the wrapper.






Fold the wrapper in half and squeeze at the top middle. Make sure the two sides actually meld, the water should help. Then, move along the edge squeezing until the entire edge has been sealed shut.








Lay the ravioli onto a dry place on a cutting board or plate. Dip the fork tines into the small bowl of flour, then gently press the tines into the sealed edge of the ravioli to give it that happy little ruffled edge. This is optional, but I think makes it look so nice.

Repeat until you either run out of filling or wrappers.***




6. Cook the Ravioli: Fill a large pot with water and salt it. Bring to a boil. Once boiling, you may add up to about 10 ravioli to your pot. The ravioli are cooked when they float to the top of the water and stay there.

7.Scoop cooked ravioli out with a slotted spoon as they finish. Split into bowls or onto plates. Drizzle the garlic herb oil  on top. Sprinkle some Parmesan if desired (you do) and eat! Excellent with a side salad and some white wine, or by themselves for a light lunch. You could even serve these ON TOP of salad and use the herb oil and a little red wine vinegar as the dressing. Enjoy!

*** These ravioli freeze really well. Dust a baking sheet with some flour and arrange the ravioli on it as you fill them. Make sure they aren't touching! Put the ravioli on the sheet into the freezer overnight. The next day, pop the ravioli off the sheet and into freezer bags, and enjoy in the next few weeks!

Eggs Florence

When I wake up on Saturdays, life feels so free. Rain or shine, my day is mine. I get to slowly acclimate to the day, without waking up to adrenaline and blaring alarms. Without lightning fast showers and running out the door with wet hair. I don't have to give a lecture to anyone today, or sternly remind students of timeliness and their work. I don't have to clock in. I do what I want, darn it!

First, I start with a cup of tea or coffee and a book. These days, it's Black tea brewed strong as I've slowly been weaning myself off of my coffee addiction. Then, I take a shower, long and hot. I lather my hair like I have all the time in the world, and I let my conditioner really have time to sink in. I get to brush my hair and let it dry into something not styled by the wind whipping through it on the motorbike (read: crazy art teacher hair). I put on my clothes that have been heating over the heater, and I slip my sock clad feet into slippers instead of real shoes. Then, I think about food. What do I want to eat today? Eggs Florence.

Eggs Florence is the homely, less subtle cousin of Eggs Florentine. They're definitely in the same family, but where Florentine might wear tea rose printed skirts, Florence wears comfy old jeans with paint stains. Florentine likes cashmere, Florence likes flannel. The differences are subtle. They both consist of a bread substance, a salty sweet breakfast meat, spinach, eggs and a citrusy-butter sauce. But Florence is more casual and slightly less fussy. Eggs Florentine is of course delicious, but Eggs Florence is friendly and approachable. The riff on hollandaise sauce here is virtually unbreakable due to the addition of Dijon, which seems to aid in the emulsification of the sauce. Not only is it easy, but I usually have everything on hand here in China, and my boyfriend loves it. So here you go.

Eggs Florence

makes 2 servings

Ingredients:

For the base:

4 eggs

2 slices Canadian bacon OR 4 slices of maple bacon OR homemade green bacon

2 slices whole wheat or sourdough bread, toasted OR 6 finger width slices of day old baguette, toasted

1 large clove of garlic, minced

1/2 a large red onion, diced

A large bunch of fresh spinach, chopped OR an appropriate amount of thawed frozen spinach

1 tsp olive oil (optional)

salt and pepper

For the sauce:

2 room temperature egg yolks (save the whites!)

3 tbsp salted butter

1 tsp olive oil

2 tsp Dijon mustard

1/4 cup fresh squeeze lemon juice

salt and pepper to taste

Directions:

1. Lightly toast your bread base. Split up the slices equally between two plates. Dice your onion, mince your garlic. Chop up your spinach. Now, I love spinach. LOVE it. I use .... a lot. I couldn't say exactly how much, but I use as much as possible each time. Decide how much to make using your own discretion, but keep in mind that wilted spinach takes up a lot less room than fresh, so use slightly more than you want to end up with.

2. Heat a large pan over medium heat, once it's hot, add your chosen meat and lightly brown it. Remove cooked meat to a plate and stick it somewhere to keep warm, like a very low oven, or a microwave.

3. If you've cooked Canadian bacon and it hasn't given off much grease, add the 1 tsp of olive oil to the same pan you cooked the meat in to heat up. Once the oil or grease is warm, add your diced onion. When it starts to become translucent, add the garlic and saute for 1 or 2 minutes just to soften it and get garlic flavor in the oil. Don't brown it! Add your chopped spinach and cook until just wilted (no longer fresh and crispy). Give it a sprinkle of salt and pepper. Remove the pan from heat and set aside.

3. In a small, heavy pan, or a double boiler, or a heat proof bowl that fits on top of a small pot of boiling water (seriously, I've used all of these methods with no problems, fear not!), add 1 tbsp of the butter and melt it over low heat. Low is the key. You don't want to scald or curdle any of these ingredients, so go with low heat. From here on out, use a whisk or a fork to stir pretty constantly, keep the sauce moving. It goes pretty fast, so don't let the instructions scare you. I've just found this method works best.

When the first tbsp of butter has melted, add 1/2 tsp of olive oil and one ROOM TEMPERATURE (I can't stress this enough) egg yolk and whisk in. Add another tbsp of butter plus the mustard and keep stirring until melted. Add the last (2nd) egg yolk, stir. Now, the last (3rd) tbsp of butter and HALF of the 1/4 cup of lemon juice, stir. I am a crazy lemon freak. I always wish that the hollandaise sauces at restaurants had more pucker and zing so I add a lot of lemon juice. But for you, taste it now and adjust accordingly. The Dijon will already give it a little bit of zing. If it's too zingy, add the other 1/2 tsp olive oil to mellow it. Add pepper and just a little salt, the Dijon is a little salty already. When you've got the flavor you want, take it off the heat, stir for one more minute to make sure it doesn't curdle, and then leave it alone while you finish up the construction of your breakfast. It will thicken a bit as it cools.

4. Heat up your spinach on the stove and while you do that, fry or poach 2 eggs per person. On the two plates, construct your Eggs Florence like so: bread base, lay down the meat on top (room temperature does not bother me here), pile your just reheated spinach into a flat-topped mountain, then lay your freshly cooked eggs gently on top. Stir up your sauce and spoon it over with wild abandon. I love me some sauce.

I usually serve this with home fry potatoes and fruit salad when I'm feeding my boyfriend and myself. When it's just me though, I eat just the Eggs Florence with an extra helping of spinach, tea and orange juice. Enjoy!