Hello Everyone!

Here we are with the Sunday’s recipe. Also for this week I’m going to show you a special main course…

In this particular period, I’m totally addicted with green vegetable, especially spinach (as you can understand from my previous post: Maremma’s Gnudi). After the recipe of Maremma’s Gnudi, i started to cook spinach in different ways: with cheese and sausages, like a salade… and some days ago I remembered one of the recipes that my mum used when I was a child. At that time I hated all the vegetables and particularly, I didn’t want to eat nothing that was green: no salad, no spinach, no cucumber, no zucchini… But I really loved milk, cheese, and rice. Due to my strange preferences, my mother studied a way in which I should eat spinach but without allow me to figured out what I eat… She cooked for me a rice with spinach and ricotta cheese… but of course, if she called the dish in this way I didn’t eat it! So she invented a proper name for fooling me: She called this dish “Dirty Rice”. My mum is a genius! I found that name funny… indeed the rice seemed to be really strange and a kind of dirty for me… so I started to eat it without knowing that I actually eat spinach!

I still call this dish “Dirty Rice” even if now I really enjoy spinach and almost all other vegetables!

Some days ago I announced to my husband that for our lunch we was going to eat “Dirty Rice”. He looked at me really puzzled… but after tried it he really loved the dish!

The recipe I suggest today is the same that my mum cooked to me, so it should be a little different compared to the recipes of “Rice with spinach and Ricotta Cheese” that you can find elsewhere.

Let’s see how I made it!

Ingredients for 4 people

Time to prepare 15 minutes – time to cook 15/20 minutes for the spinach and almost 30 minutes for the rice (it really depends from the type of rice you choose)

• 300 gr of rice;
• 150 gr of spinach (fresh or frozen);
• 150 gr of ricotta cheese;
• 1 slice of garlic;
• butter;
• extra virgin olive oil;
• salt an pepper.;
• grated parmesan cheese.

Useful tools:

• Pot for cook the rice;
• Frying pan;
• Terrinas and spatulas.

Procedure:

If you use fresh spinach, the first thing to do is washing and drying them and removing the steams. I had frozen spinach and I used it. I put in the frying pan some olive oil and a slice of garlic, and after few minutes I added the spinach. I cooked the spinach for almost 15 minutes. when they are ready I removed them from the pan and I let them cool in a terrina. In the meanwhile I put some salted water in the pot and I boiled the rice there (the time really depends from the type of rice you choose).

I added to the spinach’s terrina the ricotta cheese and I mixed all carefully. At the end I added also some parmesan cheese.

When the rice was ready, I added directly in the pot where I cooked it some butter and I melted it. After that I added also the mixture of spinach and cheeses. I mixed all the ingredients.

You should serve the rice warm (not too hot) with some grated parmesan cheese.

This is my result.

I know that the today’s recipe is not really complicate or special, and I also know that maybe it is not perfect for formal dinner. But I really love this recipe because it remembers to mee when was a child, and I’m happy to share it with you.

What about you? Did you mother use this kind of tricks with you? Let me know! I guess I was not the only that hated vegetables!

I hope you enjoy this recipe. We’ll see Sunday for a new recipe! Check my social during the week for the new “midweek” post!

Stay Tuned!

Tricks in this post:
1. One of my childhood's recipes ;
2. My mom version of Rice with Ricotta cheese and spinach: the Dirty Rice!