It’s been an uninspiring period and I haven’t been feeling well but now that my tum tum is better, I feel like cooking and baking again. Comfort food on the menu, so I made this Ukrainian-style Potato Cabbage + Leek Tart as my weekend lunch food. The pan was actually the inspiration — I found it at a thrift store and just said “Ukraine” to me (go figure, with those colors!) What came first — the recipe or the pan? Sort of like what came first — the chicken or the egg!
Breakfast/Brunch
Staying on my “Hand Pie” kick, here is a recipe for making a whole lot and freezing them. It’s a “from scratch” recipe — meaning first make your curry, then make your hand pies, but you can easily just make hand pies from any leftover curry that you might have. Just the other day, I purposefully saved some butter chicken to make some additional hand pies. Easy and always great to have in the freezer for a quick lunch.
I did a (not-baking-related) training event yesterday and it was pretty intense which means I had a hard time sleeping last night. Insomni-baking at it’s finest came up with this bundt cake recipe. That I (maybe surprisingly, maybe not) had the ingredients at hand was amazing and its a very nice breakfast this morning.
Today is a very important holiday. I mean, critically important. Yes, it’s Lunar / Chinese New Year, but no, that isn’t it. It’s National Croissant Day! See, told you it was important. 🙂
I decided to mark the occasion not by making croissants — I have made them before and they are a lot of effort — so I decided to make something with croissants instead: this Croissant and Custard Casserole. Essentially it is an overnight French toast casserole or a fancy bread pudding made with croissants. Great for breakfast as you can assemble the evening before, and have it all ready to bake up in the morning. With the buttery croissants, this is a totally decadent breakfast dish.
Spinach Mushroom & Cheddar Hand Pies
So I know that it might seem that I toil in the kitchen for hours, and sometimes I do, though “toiling” isn’t exactly the word that I would use as I enjoy spending time in the kitchen, as it is my refuge, but I am all about convenience food as well. And batch cooking. So here is something that I often make in batches: Hand pies. These are Spinach Mushroom + Cheddar Hand Pies. They are fantastic right out of the oven, but also freeze phenomenally well and with just 30 seconds in the microwave and 5 minutes in the oven to crisp up again, one (or sometimes two, shhhhh, don’t tell anyone) they make a great lunch or snack for dinner in front of the game if I am really too lazy to cook. If you search on hand pies, you’ll find more recipes too.