FOOD (Italian Dishes)

Small Pies with Ricotta and Spinach – Appetizer (for vegetarians)

This is an easy and good Italian recipe suitable as a delicious appetizer. You can prepare small pies filled with ricotta cheese and spinach personalized for each of your hosts. It is very simple to prepare them if you use a flaky pastry ready otherwise you will need much more time if you want to prepare a homemade flaky pastry. Also the personalization of the small pies is easy you only need a little bit of creative skill to make the decoration. At the end for the preparation of the filling you have only to boil the spinach, put the others ingredients all together, mix and fill the pastry with this mixture, only 15 minutes in the oven and the appetizer is ready to eat.

INGREDIENTS (for 7-9 people)

Flaky pastry

200 g Ricotta cheese

200 g of spinach

1 mozzarella cheese

1 egg

Parmesan cheese

Salt

Black pepper

PREPARATION TIME	15 minutes
COOKING TIME	30 minutes
WINE	Valpolcevera Rosato (Red wine)

PREPARATION

Roll out the flaky pastry with the help of rolling pin. Cut it with a cutter-shape or with a glass in order to obtain small piece of flaky pastry with a particular shape.

Clean the spinach and let them cook in a pan with salted water for about 10 – 15 minutes. Then drain them and let them cool. Put in a bowl the ricotta cheese, add the spinach, the egg, the Parmesan and the mozzarella cut before in small cubes.

Put the pieces of flaky pastry in a pan like this shown in the picture below, make some small holes with a fork on the surface of the pastry and fill them with the mixture of spinach and ricotta cheese.

If you have some flaky pastry left over use it to make some decoration.

Pre-heat the oven at 180°C, bake the small pie in the oven for 15 minutes until the surface becomes slightly golden.

BUON APPETITO!