Easy Recipe for Healthy Party Food
Sensational Spinach, Pine Nut and Date Pastries Packed with Flavour
Aug 16, 2008
A healthy diet does not mean no more party food. Lowering blood pressure and strengthening bones are just 2 of the benefits of eating spinach, and this easy recipe turns healthy baby spinach, dates and pine nuts into a sensational puff pastry treat.
Pine nuts have a high concentration of protein making them good for vegetarian diets. Like spinach, they also provide calcium and magnesium.
Although this easy recipe gives directions for making pastry (and it is easy ) frozen pastry can be bought instead. Make sure that it is properly thawed before rolling it out.
Delicious Spinach and Date Pastries
Makes 20 small pastries.
Basic Puff Pastry Recipe
Ingredients
- 225g / 8oz plain flour
- 225g / 8ozs cold butter
- 1/2 tsp salt
- Abour 125 ml ice cold water to mix (use sparingly)
Method
- Sieve the flour into a bowl and add the salt.
- Cut the butter in small blocks and add to the flour rubbing in with fingertips. Do it roughly so that bits of butter are still visible.
- Make a hole in the middle and pour in half the water. Mix with a knife until the dough is firm and sticking together. Add more cold water if needed but very sparingly.
- Cover the bowl with cling film and place in the fridge for 20 minutes.
- Remove from the fridge and place on a board lightly sprinkled with flour and form the dough into a rectangle. With a rolling pin, roll the dough in one direction only, until it flattens out to about 3 times the width. Keep edges fairly straight. You should still be able to see streaks of butter.
- Fold the bottom third of the rectangle of pastry up to the centre, then the top third down to make a narrow pastry sheet of 3 layers. Turn the dough so that one of the narrow edges faces you and roll out again as before. When it is again 3 times longer than wide, fold it as before. In this way, layers are created that will be light and flaky.
- Wrap in cling film and return to the fridge for 40 minutes.
Or use 350gm/12oz puff pastry already thawed.
Filling
- 1 lb chopped baby spinach
- 2 tbsp olive oil
- 2 cloves garlic, crushed
- 3 tbsp dates, stoned and roughly chopped
- 1/3 cup pinenuts, chopped
- Pinch of nutmeg (about 1/8 tsp)
- 1 egg, beaten, to glaze pastry
- salt and pepper to taste
Method
- Heat oil in large pan and cook spinach for 2 minutes, stirring and turning.
- Add salt and pepper nutmeg.
- As the spinach cooks, moisture will gather in the pan. Keep cooking until all liquid has evaporated and then add garlic and stir for another minute.
- Remove from heat and add pinenuts and dates.
- Stir and leave to cool.
- Roll out pastry quite thinly and use a cookie cutter or a glass to cut out 20 circles of 3 inch/75cms radius.
- Place 2 tsps of the spinach mixture on one side of each circle.
- Brush around the edge of each circle and fold the pastry over to make a half circle.
- Press the edges together to keep the filling inside.
- Brush the pastries with beaten egg and bake for 15 minutes at 180 or 350 until golden brown.
Serve while still warm, with a red wine, for the perfect party food, alongside fruit appetisers and other party finger food.
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