It’s the holiday season, so you’ll probably find yourself entertaining (or in the mood for party food, at least). 13-13: Spinach Turnovers are a nice vegetarian option that you can bring to a party or just make for yourself.
I made these along with 9-26: Crispy Beef Turnovers for a get-together I went to recently. The ingredients & method for both are somewhat similar, so I prepared both at the same time, which worked out pretty well. If you find yourself with extra puff pastry (and maybe a deep fryer), consider a third turnover option, 1-7: Trader Vic’s Crab Turnovers.
I don’t know if my mom ever made these, but I think she’d like them. These were a big hit with the vegetarians at the get-together I attended.
Ingredients. I chose to go with fresh spinach, although I was lazy and didn’t chop it down much farther than what you see here. I don’t have sesame seeds, although when I was at the store shopping for this dish I could have SWORE that I did. Oh well.
The saffron is in the glass jar in front–this is real Iranian saffron brought back for me from Iran by a student a few years ago when I was a teacher. Quite the gift.
One of numerous onion pictures I’ve found myself taking during this project.
First handful of spinach into the pan–this was about half of the bag.
Down to wilted leaves. Doesn’t take much time to get the whole bag into the pan.
Here’s the whole bag after I sautéed it down. Probably should have chopped it to reduce the probability of biting into it and having a big piece get stuck, but I was doing a lot of cooking that day, so I let it go. If I did it again, I’d just go with the pre-chopped frozen stuff–it’s the easiest for recipes like this.
Cutting up the puff pastry sheets. Puff pastry is a fickle bitch–too cold and it breaks, too warm and it melts & sticks to everything. I lost a whole package to letting it get too warm and then having it adhere to itself, somehow absorbing the paper wrapper inside the sticky mess.
Overstuffing the dough (a bad habit) and sealing with a quick brush of egg wash.
After they came out. I was slightly in the weeds at this point, and so picture-taking became a lessened priority. However, I did stuff about 12 turnovers and used my silicone baking mat to ensure no sticking & no burned bottoms. If you don’t have one of those, it’s okay–you’ll probably be fine. I made turnovers at work the other day with no mat and they didn’t stick or burn at all.
Here’s a close-up view of one-–mine look a little more bloated than the ones on the recipe card.
Making the saffron sauce–an afterthought in all of the hustle & bustle. Here’s the vegetable stock with the saffron threads in it. I didn’t measure very well, but mine was very saffron-y, so adjust accordingly if you want less punch.
Dollops of sour cream into the cornstarch-thickened stock. It came out a creamy yellow, and was a nice touch with the otherwise-plain turnovers (my opinion after trying them at the party).
No final picture of the sauce. Sorry about that, I’m a bad photojournalist sometimes.
Grade: B+
