Turkey Ragu Recipe

Here's the turkey ragu I made up during the March Daring Bakers challenge.

TURKEY RAGU
2 tablespoons olive oil
3 shallots, minced (or equivalent amount of any onion)
1 large carrot, minced
2 stalks celery, minced
1/2 pound ground turkey
2 hot Italian turkey sausages
20 slices turkey pepperoni, minced
2 cups hot turkey, chicken, or vegetable stock
4 whole canned tomatoes
2 tablespoons pureed tomato (optional - I was just trying to use this up, so I threw it in there)

Heat olive oil over medium in large skillet (regular, not non-stick, if possible). Add shallots, carrot, and celery and cook until vegetables start to soften. Add ground turkey and sausage, breaking up as much as possible. Once meats are cooked through, lower heat to medium-low and add minced turkey pepperoni. Cook until ground meats take on a faint golden-brown hue, stirring occasionally. You probably have a brown glaze on the bottom of the pan and some meat might be sticking. Transfer meat and vegetables to saucepan, then add half a cup of stock to skillet and scrape as much of the brown glaze up as possible, stirring it in to the stock. When you've got the pan pretty well scraped, dump the stock and brown stuff in to the saucepan with the meats and vegetables. Simmer over low heat until almost all liquid is absorbed. Add remaining stock to the saucepan 1/2 cup at a time, simmering until almost totally absorbed after each addition. Break up meats as much as possible every time you stir more stock in. Once almost all stock is absorbed, add tomatoes and break them up as much as possible. Simmer for another ten to fifteen minutes.

spinach, two ways

After a couple of days of salads for dinner, I was ready for something a little different. I decided to tackle the rather large bag of spinach. I'm not a huge spinach eater; I do use frozen spinach a lot in the winter when fresh, local greens aren't available, but given the option, I'll usually choose other greens. The one exception is this amazing pomegranate and spinach salad recipe from The Armenian Table, an excellent cookbook that I received as a Christmas present from my (Armenian) mother-in-law. That salad was so wonderful I must have made it about ten times in three weeks, and I went through withdrawal when the pomegranates disappeared from the grocery store shelves.

Anyway, back to the spinach - I decided to use some of it for a pasta dish. I sauteed it with some onions and garlic in a little olive oil, then tossed it with penne and (for lack of ricotta) cottage cheese. A little grated asiago on top finished it off. It was an okay supper, but not quite as good as I expected it to be. I think next time it would be better with feta. (Doesn't that sound like a tagline? "Everything's betta with feta!")

We had some leftover, so I put it in our bentos the next day, along with a simple salad (lettuce, carrots, walnuts, dried cranberries) and some turkey pepperoni for protein.

By the next night, Thursday, I was really sick of salads and terrified of how much spinach remained. I decided it could only be handled with cheese. Bring on the calzones!

Whole-wheat pizza dough from the Coop is reasonably healthy but probably did little to counteract the cheesezilla action as seen in this picture. Four different cheeses combined to make this one tasty calzone: mozzarella, provolone, ricotta, and feta. At least they were all low-fat cheeses, but the cumulative fat factor = not so great. Still, there was (some) spinach in there. We added a little marinara for dipping and had one deliciously cheesy meal.

Now for the bad news: we STILL have spinach left from week one, and today, in box number two, we received more. Lots more. Probably like five pounds more. And there's only two of us (that are human). Unless Ashley the cat takes a liking to fresh greens, I think we're stuck with a spinach surplus.