Eggs Florentine Pie

I saw the recipe for this eggs florentine puff pastry pie on the BBC Good Food website a few weeks ago. With the temperatures in the upper 90s at dinner time, there was no way I was going to turn the over on to make it, but I kept thinking about it. With a much more temperate day facing us, I began to think I could risk turning on the oven and proceeded.

It's a simple recipe, but even though I added garlic and chopped onion, it was still a little bland (a common problem with Brit recipes, I find), but still a nice change of pace. It's just a sheet of puff pastry, pre-baked for 10 minutes or so, then topped with spinach sauteed in olive oil with garlic and onion, then mixed with ricotta cheese, salt, pepper and nutmeg.  Back in the oven for about 15 minutes and it's done. To serve, I chopped up a tomato and some green onion to scatter on top.

While at the grocery store, I found a package of 8 or 9 very ripe bananas for 69 cents. Sold! Banana bread. At this point, I was giddy with the idea that it wasn't 98F and I was making bakng plans with abandon. I found a good looking recipe (I added walnuts) on Allrecipes.com  and knocked out a loaf.

While I had the oven on, and since, annoyingly, the two sheets of puff pastry in a box come in the same wrapper (so dumb!), I had to use them both up. Then it must be palmiers, the absolute easiest cookie in the world. Roll out a sheet of puff pastry atop 1/3 cup or so of sugar, sprinkle the top side with more sugar, roll up each long side till they meet in the middle, then slice approximately 3/8 inch pieces and place them cut side down on a baking sheet. Bake until the sugar is caramelized and the cookie is slightly browned. So simple and so very delicious.