From Garden to Plate: Spinach, Cauliflower & Cheddar Bake

Spinach, Cauliflower & Bell Pepper Bake

Now that we've joined the Big Green Egg cult, I haven't cooked a single piece of meat in the house, unless you count a pan or two of bacon. While I used to be the BBQ Girl around here, regularly loading and running a smoker full of apple logs and briskets while my disinterested DH watched baseball, I am now Kitchen Girl. The Egg has kindled a new interest in outdoor cooking in him and I am relegated to the side dishes. For the moment...I'll be back out there as soon as I can.

Meanwhile, though, it has given me a man-free kitchen to whomp up something to go with the manly burnt offerings (actually he hasn't burned anything, but it sounds good). And when you cook the meat outdoors, there is no roasting pan to wash. So it's all good and I pretty much love our Egg as much as he does, maybe more, since I've wanted one far longer. But I digress...

Remember I was whining about  the slim pickings in the garden last Friday? Well, it still is producing a little of this and that. All good.  Some shallots dug a few weeks ago, garlic, and bell peppers. And I got a very small cauliflower at the farmers market on Friday which, when you are aiming for low- carb, is a godsend. It made the base for a good cheesy dish that's somewhere between a casserole and a crustless quiche. You can add or subtract whatever you don't like here, but the eggs and sour cream proportions need to stay constant, or, well, you have an entirely different dish...possibly not bad, but different.

Note: to grate cauliflower, just scrape it on the big holes of a box grater, or chop it medium-fine in a food processor. To cook it, I just sauté it in a bit of butter until soft. If you want to keep this dish vegetarian, either use vegetarian Worcestershire sauce, or Pickapeppa sauce which has no anchovies in it.

Homegrown peppers and shallots.

Spinach, Cauliflower & Cheddar Bake

3 cups of grated cauliflower, cooked soft
1T extra virgin olive oil
1 large shallot, minced
1 garlic clove, minced
1 red bell pepper, diced 1/2"
5 oz. baby spinach
2 eggs
1 cup sour cream
1 tsp. Cholula or other hot sauce
1 tsp. Worcestershire sauce
1 cup shredded extra sharp cheddar cheese
salt and pepper

Preheat the oven to 375ºF. Oil a 9" square oven-to-table baking dish. Heat the olive oil in a large nonstick frying pan, and add the shallot, garlic and bell pepper. Sauté on medium heat until the pepper is soft and the shallot is limp. Stir in the spinach a bit at a time and cook until it just wilts. Turn off the heat and set aside in the pan to cool for a minute or two.

Infinite possibilities with fresh-from-the-garden vegetables.

Whisk together the eggs, sour cream hot sauce and Worcestershire in a medium bowl. Stir in the cheese, and the vegetable mixture from the pan. Season to taste with salt and pepper. Pour the mixture into the prepared baking dish and bake for 45 -60 minutes until brown at the edges and bubbly. Good side with grilled meat or as a vegetarian main with a salad.

Serves 4-6.

Fee, Fie, Foe, Friday: Somebody Took My Smoker

We've joined a cult. My old, big BBQ smoker had to go when I could no longer hitch and trailer it, and a few years back, I got a medium sized one. The little one is somewhere lost behind the shed. I cranked out a lot of good brisket, ribs and pork shoulders in that thing. I modified it quite a bit along the way with a lot of help from the nice folks at Smoking Meat Forums. I named it Faithful. But I still had to stay up most of the night tending the fire every few hours to keep it going low and slow. Finally I caved, and we bought a Big Green Egg, which as far as I am concerned, is the ultimate Grill-BBQ-Smoker. I don't have to snooze in a chaise lounge between the smoker and a pile of applewood any more. The BGE will hold a steady temp for hours which means Mama gets to SLEEP. In bed. The Big Green Egg may have a cultish following, but there's a reason. There is nothing like it in 'Q world. We're in the BGE cult.

But what to do with the now-rusting hulk of my old Faithful? If you look in the upper left of the picture below, you can see it sitting lonely out in the middle of the yard, while the BGE takes center stage. Black and rusty, it was no beauty, but it worked. Temperamental, but it worked. Faithful weighs around 200 pounds, and since we had no way to dispose of it, we called our trash hauler and they were going to send a truck with two brawny men to take it away, and Faithful's BBQ days were done.

Poor old Faithful, back there in the upper left corner, has been replaced.

Since he had some time early this evening, before we went out to dinner, Chuck shoved and pushed Faithful all the way to the edge of the lawn near the curb to catch a ride in a trash truck tomorrow. Then we left for dinner. Two hours later, as we turned into the driveway, there was an empty spot where Faithful had been sitting. It was gone. Somebody took my smoker. Faithful may just have another chance at being the centerpiece of big BBQs again. God, I hope so. Saved from the trash truck in the nick of time.

Rock on Faithful; I know you'll be smokin' wherever you are.