Recipe: Julie Buiso's spinach galettes

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Food: Julie Buiso at Home has just hit the stores, offering over 270 recipes to prepare "good, honest food from scratch" and plenty of inspiration to get some creative kitchen ideas flowing. You'll find everything from mid-week meals to brunches to nibbles for tricky guests.

Try these spinach galettes, a crispy stack of savoury pancakes topped with a simple tomato sauce and melted cheese. Delicious!

SERVES 4
These are simply sensational, and not that much bother to make. You might be tempted to take a short cut and use an already prepared tomato sauce, but the sauce here is so easy, and will cost a quarter of the price of one from the supermarket - and, importantly, I reckon, you'll know what's in it if you make it yourself! I'd definitely serve a red with this - either a medium weight cabernet sauvignon or a cabernet merlot blend.

Ingredients:
Tomato sauce
3 Tbsp olive oil
2 cloves garlic, peeled and crushed
2 x 400g cans crushed Italian tomatoes
Salt and freshly ground black pepper

Spinach galettes
250g frozen spinach
8 medium (size 6) free- range eggs
4 Tbsp milk
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
30g butter
1/2 cup freshly grated parmesan (or grana padano) cheese
Handful of basil leaves

Method:
1 For the tomato sauce, put olive oil and garlic in a medium-sized saucepan over gentle heat. Cook for a few minutes until garlic just starts to change colour. Carefully tip in tomatoes, season with ½ a teaspoon of salt and a little black pepper, then bring to a gentle boil. Lower heat and cook sauce for 30 minutes, stirring often, until thick and pulpy.

2 For the galette, thaw spinach in a microwave, cool, then wring out as much moisture as possible with your hands. Chop finely. In a bowl, beat eggs with a fork, add spinach, milk and ½ a teaspoon of salt and black pepper to taste.

3 Preheat oven to 180°C (fanbake). Heat a small omelette pan and when it is nice and hot drop in a knob of butter. When butter is sizzling and just threatening to burn (but don't let it!), add a small ladleful of spinach mixture. Cook until golden, then turn pancake carefully with a palette knife and cook other side until golden. Repeat to make 10 pancakes in total, heating a little more butter in the pan before cooking each one.

4 Have ready a shallow ovenproof dish which is large enough to hold 2 stacks of pancakes and line with baking paper. When all pancakes are done, layer them in the ovenproof dish with the tomato sauce, cheese and basil making 2 stacks: put in the first two pancakes and spoon chunky tomato sauce over each, sprinkle with a little cheese (keep plenty for the top), add a few basil leaves and grind over a little black pepper. Repeat layers until there are 5 pancakes in each stack. Spoon a little more sauce over each stack, sprinkle with cheese and dot with a little butter.

5 Cook for about 15 minutes in preheated oven, or until golden on top and bubbling around edges. To serve, cut stacks into quarters like a cake.

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