Taste Buds: Spinach Empanadillas plus German Potato Salad

A couple of Mondays ago, the kitchen adventures of Ms B and Cindy began. This attempt to learn our way in the kitchen seems to now be growing into our very own cooking club as some other friends have expressed interest in joining our Monday rendezvous. But, we shall see. Nonetheless, Cindy (who first graced the pages of this blog in her comment on my homemade marinara sauce post) and I have prepared two dinners so far. And, these two dinners were both a hit! So, you will definitely see us grow as chefs on our own right here in our Taste Buds series!

Our first dinner was impromptu. We were supposed to scrapbook then we started looking at Chef’s cookbooks. We talked about our protein being something I’ve already made, hence, a baked southwestern tilapia. Fabulous. Quick and what should now be easy for me. Then, we found two dishes: Spinach Empanadillas and German Potato Salad. After a quick run to the store, we assigned one dish to each other, and we worked away. Cindy took charge of the spinach, and I prepared the fish and the potato salad.

Spinach Empanadillas

According to the cookbook, the ingredients of this little pastry has strong Moorish influence. The filling in the book calls for raisins, olive oil, spinach, anchovies, garlic cloves, and salt and pepper, all enveloped in a puff pastry. The raisins were warmed and chopped, the spinach was sautéed. Cindy and I don’t quite like anchovies and so we replaced it with bacon! Hmmm!! Crispy bacon was added to the spinach, plus garlic, plus the seasoning. After it cooled a bit, the raisins and nuts were mixed in (we didn’t have pine nuts so we added almonds – yup, we’ll substitute LOL!). As the oven was preheated at 350 degrees F, the puff pastry was rolled out, and a cutter was used to make those perfect circles. The filling was spooned in the middle of each circle, and the edges were brushed with water and sealed together using the back of a fork. The pastries were brushed with egg to give a golden color after baking. This is truly a great appetizer with the sweet and salty flavors all balanced with a healthy spinach. I had another Rémy moment when each flavor just exploded in my mouth!

German Potato Salad

Unfortunately, Chef who was acting as our photographer did not take any pictures of my German potato salad. So, the only picture you can see of this yummy side dish is on the served plate, where the fish is laying on. Anyhoo, this was totally easy to make too. The potatoes were sliced at about 1/2″ thickness and boiled. In a large bowl, I mixed apple cider vinegar, olive oil, and whole-grain mustard. I didn’t have some of the spices that the recipe called for so I added my own: dill, salt, pepper, chili powder, dried oregano and basil. I added the potatoes and tossed it around my mixture. Oh, the recipe also called for anchovies again, and that was substituted with, you guessed it, BACON! I’m not quite a fan of mustard or vinegar but I liked them in this dish. I loved the sweet and sour flavors, not to mention the pleasant bacon bits. The downside of this dish is that you can’t quite stop eating it! And we all know that too much potatoes is a no no!!

Oh, by the way, the cookbooks gave measurements but you know what, I think you can pretty much gauge and control however much you want to add for these two dishes!

Watch out for our second dinner menu soon! We went Mediterranean all the way!

Hot German Potato Salad

Spinach