FoodB

This here is an actual picture of what we cooked last night. My digital camera has been crapping out the last couple of months and I haven't broken down and started shopping for new ones. Thankfully, Jennifer's mom is loaning us her's while we help her out on some e-bay stuff so I was able to take a picture of the most-requested dish from my wife.

Back in the day when we were living in Oregon, Jenn started to go through a food renaissance of sorts and she started experimenting with recipes she found with ingredients that we had never even heard of and this is how orzo pie was introduced to me. Orzo is a rice shaped pasta that is used in a lot of greek recipes, as I found out later, and to me was always one of those pasta noodles that wasn't spaghetti or macaroni. The recipe seemed very similar to lasagna (spinach and ricotta being the main ingredients) and me not being a big fan of lasagna I was skeptical the first time she cooked it. Boy was I wrong. Here's the recipe:

Orzo Pie
1 cup of dry Orzo
1 Large Egg
1/4 cup Shredded Parmesan
16oz. Ricotta Cheese
1 Box of Frozen Spinach (Thawed & Drained)
1/2 Tspn. Nutmeg
1 Can of Spaghetti Sauce (We prefer the Hunts Spaghetti sauce in a can)
1/2 cup of Fontina or Mozzarella Cheese

1. Cook the Orzo according to the directions on the box. Rinse the noodles with cold water twice and set aside to dry. Once it dries transfer it to a mixing bowl and add in beaten egg and parmesan cheese and mix well.
2. Get a pie pan or pie casserole dish and lay the orzo at the bottom smoothing out evenly and up the edges (forming a pie crust)
3. In another small bowl mix together Ricotta Cheese, Spinach & Nutmeg. Lay the mixture evenly in the center of the orzo pie crust, leaving the edges to show, just like you would a real pie.
4. Cover the edges of the orzo pie crust with foil (keeping the edges from burning in the oven). Add about half a cup of Spaghetti sauce on top.
5. Put in the oven at 350 degrees for 30 minutes. After 30 minutes, take out of the oven and put the fontina or mozzarella cheese on top. 1/2 a cup should do it but you can add more if you'd like.
6. Put back in the oven for another 5-10 minutes or until cheese is melted and bubbly. Take out of the oven and let it cool for a couple of minutes.
7. Cut & serve it just like you would a regular pie. Tip: You take the rest of the Spaghetti sauce left over heat in a small sauce pan on the stove and add more sauce onto the slices once served. More sauce is always a good thing.

Like I said above, it does resemble lasagna yet it tastes a lot different. The orzo noodle crust of the pie is really what does it for me. The crust is think and keeps the pie together yet is also made of cooked noodles so it is really soft when you eat it. Really good stuff and I hope you try and make it and see why I ask my wife for this about every three weeks.