Easy Spinach Pasta Pie

After a fun weekend of brewing beer, painting art, and watching softball all with good friends, it was back to the grind this morning.  My day flew by and dinner snuck up on me.  Turns out the mystery green from last week's CSA box WAS spinach, just like they said it was.  I guess I've never actually eaten fresh non-baby spinach, which is why I didn't recognize it.  I feel like I'm learning so much and it's only week one!  Once I realized I had spinach, and am getting more of it tomorrow, I figured I'd better start cooking the darn stuff!  I went through my two favorite cookbooks Bittman's How to Cook Everything and The Moosewood Cookbook and came up with six spinach recipes.  Then Dave reminded me that Indian Saag involves spinach, so I broke out the Indian Cook book for that.  Still, I didn't have many of the non-spinach ingredients for the recipes.  I'll make them later in the week after a trip to the grocery store for a few small items. 

My CSA sent out a newsletter with the below recipe for Fresh Greens Pasta Pie, which I did have ingredients for!  I'm sure everyone doesn't have rice vermicelli sitting around like I do, but since it's gluten free, and takes only boiling water, I tend to make backpacking packets out of it.  Anyway, you can find the rice vermicelli in your Asian food section of the grocery store.

The pie was surprisingly tasty!  I had no idea what to expect, but I'd make it again for sure.

Since everyone on the web seems to have ripped this recipe off from Crystal Lake Gardens, and I can't find the original webpage, I'll rip it off as well.  I didn't have milk on hand (very vanilla soy milk doesn't belong in spinach pie), so I used water. 

Fresh Greens Pasta Pie--   6 ounces vermicelli  2 tbs butter of margarine, softened  1/3 cup grated Parmesan cheese  5 eggs  2 tsp cooking oil  1 small onion, chopped  2 cups fresh spinach or other greens 1 cup shredded mozzarella cheese  1/3 cup milk  1/2 tsp salt  1/4 tsp freshly ground pepper  1/8 tsp ground nutmeg  several shakes hot pepper sauce  Any other veggies you have in the fridge (optional)  Heat oven to 350 degrees.  Lightly grease a large pie plate.  Cook vermicelli according to package directions; drain.  Stir butter and Parmesan cheese into hot vermicelli.  Beat 2 of the eggs and stir well into pasta.  Spoon mixture into pie plate, and use a spoon to shape vermicelli into a pie shell.  Cover with aluminum foil and bake 10 minutes.  Set aside.  Heat oil in small skillet, add onion and saute until tender.  Beat the remaining 3 eggs and combine with spinach, mozzarella, milk, seasonings, and sauteed onions.  Spoon spinach mixture into pasta shell.  Cover pie with aluminum foil.  Bake 35 minutes; uncover and bake an additional 5 minutes.  Let stand 10 minutes before slicing.  Makes 6 servings.  Recipe by Crystal Lake Gardens