Strictly Come Cooking: Recipe of the Month
By Angela Zaher / Recipe by Alison Ranwell
Each month, we feature a recipe we’d love for you to have a go at. We’ll pick ones that are easy to follow, quick to make and inspire you with fresh ideas and clever combinations that broaden your culinary horizons and show off your cooking skills, at whatever level they are. Following the ethos of the late Michael Mosley’s Just One Thing, it’s good for our minds and palates to try out one new thing every month, and this might just be it. Send us your thoughts and pictures via Instagram to @timeandleisure and we’ll make sure to share on our socials so that you become the star of the show.
This month (and you have until the end of June to try this one out), the recipe is from Alison Ranwell’s lovely cookbook Appetito. Available in hardcopy or ebook, Appetito is packed with family recipes for comfort food Italian style- packed with flavour and goodness. Her Torta Pasqualina is the perfect mid week dinner or weekend lunch to make in a rush but enjoy at leisure. I’ll be making it tonight, what about you?
TORTA PASQUALINA
Preparation time: 30 minutes
Cooking time: 1 hour
Serves 8-12
Ingredients
- 800g spinach leaves, chard or beet greens
- 250g ricotta cheese
- 50g Grana Padano, grated
- Nutmeg, grated, to taste
- 2 sheets of puff pastry
- Salt and pepper, to taste
- 6 eggs, plus 1 egg for the egg wash
Preparation
- Start by washing the leaves in cold water to remove any dirt or bugs, then place them in a large saucepan. Cook on a low heat with the lid on for 10 minutes until the leaves have wilted. Remove from the heat and set aside to cool.
- Once cooled, squeeze the excess liquid from the greens and roughly chop with a knife.
- Mix the leaves with the ricotta, Grana Padano, a good grate of nutmeg, salt, pepper, and 1 egg.
- Line a 22-24cm diameter baking tin with baking paper and one sheet of puff pastry. Prick the bottom with a fork and pour the mixture into the baking tin, making sure it’s spread out evenly.
- Make five small but deep wells in the mixture with the back of a teaspoon and gently break an egg into each hole.
- Cover the top of the quiche with the second sheet of puff pastry, folding the edges together to seal the top, then slice a couple of slits into the pastry or prick it with a fork. Add a few decorations using the remaining pastry (cookie cutters work really well).
- Wash the top of the quiche with beaten egg and bake at 180°c for 1 hour. Check every 20 minutes to see if the top is browning too much, and if so, cover with a loose sheet of aluminium foil.
- Let the quiche cool in the tin until lukewarm, then cut into slices or cool completely for a picnic.
Cook’s Notes
You can experiment with the greens and even use finely chopped artichokes, just as Torta Pasqaulina was once made in Liguria.
I find it nice and easy to use frozen spinach. It can be defrosted in advance so you can put the quiche together quickly. Frozen spinach is also already washed, which is handy.
In Italy, you can find pre-made puff and short crust brisée pastry, which are both delicious options for this quiche.
Torta Pasqualina is wonderful served warm and cold, and it’s the perfect pie to make the day before a picnic.
