As it is quite chilly outside I prefer to eat warm food for lunch, I saw these stuffed spinach baguettes and wanted to give them a try, it is such a great alternative to a sandwich.
Play around with your ingredients, you may wish to use a different cheese or a stronger one instead of parmesan, some garlic when sautéing your spinach or some sautéed mushrooms to add on the top of your baguette. I added some bacon and a few pine nuts to mine.
The length of the baguettes that I used were about 22cm long, if you can not find small baguettes use a larger one and haft it. This recipe is also great with bread that is slightly older and has become a little stale.
I choose to sauté the spinach instead of blanching it as spinach has a high water content and when you sauté it, it immediately starts to release and cook off some of the excess water when it hits the hot pan. Once your baguette has cooked allow to cool a bit before you get stuck in 🙂
If you can only find the very long baguettes you can double the recipe. As all baguettes can be different in size, if you have any left over filling make it into a yummy omelet.
I hope you enjoy xx
(Recipe adapted from Georgina Fuggle – Take One Veg).
Spinach Ricotta Baguette
Ingredients
- 100 g baby spinach
- 50 g ricotta
- 100 ml cream
- 1 egg
- 40 g parmesan
- 2 mini baguettes
- 10 g Pine nuts optional
- 2 - 3 pieces pf bacon optional
- salt and pepper
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 160°C
- Hollow out the baguettes by cutting a long oval shape and then removing some of the soft bread on the inside with your hands, make sure that you do not make a hole as the filling will then leak out.
- If using pine nuts, in a pan on a medium to low heat toast the pine nuts until golden brown.
- If you are using bacon, in a medium pan on a medium to high heat cook the bacon until crispy, remove from the heat and break it up.
- Add the spinach to the same pan as the bacon and using the juices of the bacon sauté the spinach on a medium heat (add a drop of oil to the pan if you did not use bacon) until it has all wilted this will take about a 1 minute or so.
- In a medium bowl beat the egg then add the ricotta, cream, parmesan cheese and some salt and pepper and mix it all together. Add the spinach and bacon (keeping some bacon to sprinkle over the top if you want) and mix it all together. Pour the mixture into the baguettes and then place the baguettes into a ovenproof dish. Place in the oven and cook for about 30 minutes until the top is a lovely golden brown.
- Remove from the oven (add a topping if you wish to) and allow to cool a little bit.