Post the Twenty-third (in which our heroine meets a Stephen King book she doesn't like)

Emmet would have said it wasn't possible.  And, to be honest, so would I.  There isn't really any handy way to describe just how much I love Stephen King's work.  He's often dismissed as a hack (generally by people who haven't read him, I find) and horror as an entire genre tends to be written off by the literary types, but by God, that man has a gift for words and a subtler turn of phrase than he's ever given credit for.

However...

I bought his new "short story" collection yesterday - they're actually more novellas than short stories.  It's called "Full Dark, No Stars" and if anything excites me more than a new King novel, it's a new anthology.  I actually feel like I'm somehow being unfaithful to him even by writing this, but, amazingly, FD,NS didn't live up to expectations.  The subject material was very un-King-like, and, at times, I felt like I could have been reading a toned-down Richard Laymon.  This, readers, is not a favourable comparison - Laymon wrote, to quote a memorable critic, "Stomach-churning porno-violence".  In this particular tome, three out of four stories have extreme violence against women at their heart, and two out of those three have rape as a recurring theme.  I am far from a prudish reader, but this is so unlike King (who has actually been accused countless times of pedestalising his female subjects) that I found it very hard to read.  Indeed, I think the reason it was so hard to read is because it felt so contrived - it was so, so obviously not a style that he was comfortable writing in, and that discomfort practically leapt off the page.  I just wonder what made him try it at all.

Anyway, yesterday I attempted to harvest the remainder of my spinach.  This was easier said than done, because spinach is amazingly prolific and even when you think it's going to seed, when you cut the bigger leaves, you find yet another crop of younger ones underneath.  For anyone wanting to start growing their own veg, this is the way to go.  And, in fact, I found myself specifically looking for spinach recipes, so that I could use this batch.  I also had chicken fillets fresh from the butcher, and reckoned a chicken & spinach lasagna might be just the way to go.  Unfortunately, none of the recipes I found quite lit my fire, so I combined the best bits from all of them, and this is what I came up with.

Chicken & Spinach Lasagna - serves 4-6

4 large chicken fillets                              8 double- handfuls of adult spinach
2 onions, diced                                      4 cloves garlic, crushed
2 knobs butter                                       Glass white wine
25g butter                                             25g flour
350ml milk                                            Half a nutmeg, grated
100g grated parmesan                           350ml natural yoghurt
1 egg                                                    6 sheets of lasagna, par-boiled
Salt & pepper

1.  Poach your chicken fillets* in simmering water until just cooked.  I usually add pepper, garlic granules and a bay leaf to the poaching liquid.  Drain, chop roughly and set aside.

2.  While the chicken is cooking, melt a knob of butter with a glug of oil in a large pan.  Add the onions & garlic and sauté gently until just beginning to soften.  Add the glass of wine and turn off the heat.

3.  Melt the other knob of butter over a low heat.  Rinse your spinach and remove any thick stalks.  Add the spinach to the butter and cook, turning constantly, until you can fit it all in the pot and it's completely wilted.  Add the spinach and the chicken to the white wine/onion mix and toss to combine.  Season with plenty of salt & pepper.

4.  In another pot, melt the 25g of butter.  Stir in the flour and cook, stirring frequently, for about ten minutes.  Add the milk, stirring constantly, a little at a time, until you achieve a thick, but pourable consistency.  Add the parmesan & the nutmeg and stir until smooth.  Bechamel is very much an instinctive type of sauce, so if it looks to thick, add more milk, if it's too thin, increase the heat until it thickens a bit.  Use your common sense.

5. Stir the spinach & chicken mix into the bechamel.  In a small bowl, beat the egg into the yoghurt and thin with a little water.

6. Lay a third of the chicken mix into an ovenproof dish.  Lay over three of the lasagna sheets (btw, par-boiling them stops them soaking up all of your sauce, making for a nice, floppy, sloppy lasagna), then repeat with another layer of chicken, the other three pasta sheets, and another layer of chicken.  Finish with the yoghurt "sauce".

7. Bake at 200C until the top is browned & bubbly.  Enjoy, and, if at all possible, get someone else to do the washing up because, alas, this recipe generates a lot of dishes.

*This would actually be the perfect dish to make with the strippings of a roast chicken in place of the fillets.  Unfortunately, with three dogs about, leftovers are a bit of an alien concept in our house.

Post the Tenth (in which our heroine apologises for her tardiness)

I'm a terrible blogger.  Two whole days with nary a recipe, a moan or a rumination.  I really am sorry.  I'm on my holliers in Dublin (i.e. staying in my mam's for a few days) and have been doing entirely too much drinking and the blog just fell by the wayside.  But I'm going to make it up to you now by giving you the recipe for a friggin amazing cannelloni that's almost guilt-free because I've replaced the ricotta cheese and bechamel sauce with cottage cheese and the ultimate lazy white sauce.  Having had a good look at myself in a full-length mirror this morning, I think I need to do a lot more cheese replacement in the coming weeks.  I'm looking rather more Rubenesque than I'm entirely happy with, I have to say.  I blame being a bum.  Too much time on my hands to cook nice things and bake bread which simply demands to be eaten with real butter.

Spinach & "Ricotta" Cannelloni - serves 4

2 knobs butter                                     4 cloves garlic, peeled & finely sliced
Handful fresh sage or oregano              1/4 of a nutmeg, grated
8 large handfuls spinach, washed          Handful fresh basil, stalks chopped, leaves chiffonaded
2 tins tomatoes                                    400g low-fat cottage cheese
100g grated parmesan                         Sugar, salt & pepper
500ml fat-free natural yoghurt              1 egg
16 cannelloni tubes

1) Put a knob of the butter and a dash of olive into a large pot/pan.  Add two of the garlic cloves, the sage or oregano (chopped, obviously) and the nutmeg and turn the ring onto high.  By the time the oil is hot, the garlic should be softened.  Add the spinach (pull off any really tough stalks) and cook down - as it wilts, you'll be able to keep putting more in - nothing does a more impressive disappearing act than spinach.  Allow to wilt thoroughly, then stick it into the bowl/jug of a food processor and leave to cool a bit.

2) Put the pan back on the heat and add the second knob of butter and a bit more oil.  Add the basil stalks and the rest of the garlic and cook for 5 minutes without browning.  Add the tins of tomatoes, a pinch of sugar and salt & lots of black pepper.  Bring to the boil, reduce the heat and simmer for about 10 minutes or until you get a nice sauce consistency.  I usually chuck in a good tablespoon of oregano at this stage too.

3) Preheat the oven to 180C.  Add the cottage cheese and half the grated parmesan to the blender.  Whizz it all together, then spoon it into a sandwich bag and tie it off.  Find a shallow tray that will take all your cannelloni in one layer, and put the tomato sauce in the bottom.

4) Cut one of the corners off your sandwich bag and pipe the spinach mix into the cannelloni tubes.  Lay them on top of the tomato sauce.  Make your white sauce by mixing the yoghurt, the egg and the rest of the parmesan, and loosen with a few drops of water.  Spread over the cannelloni and bake for 20 - 25 minutes until golden and bubbling.  Serve with a green salad and garlic bread.

Photo shamelessly stolen from my friend R, as I totally forgot to take one!

Enjoy!