Spinach Puffs (The Emperor’s New Groove)

There is nothing quite like eating what you’re watching or reading. When we do, it feels like we’re a little closer to the characters and worlds we’ve come to love.

Every time I watched The Emperor’s New Groove, I always wanted to taste Kronk’s Spinach Puffs. So, to have some fun and to extend the movie-watching experience into the kitchen and then into my mouth, I decided to try to make them. Ah, there they are. Look at that smooth, pale exterior and that flat green circle of filling! Well, the movie’s art style isn’t exactly hung up on the details of food. But! That just means there’s more room for interpretation. Regardless of their rather plain appearance, they still somehow manage to look very appetizing, don’t they? Or maybe it’s just because they’re connected with one of the best characters Disney has ever produced.

A Little Background
The Emperor’s New Groove is a Disney movie that came out in 2000. It’s loosely set in the Incan empire. In the movie, the emperor Kuzco gets turned into a llama by the villainess Yzma and sets out on a humbling adventure to undo his transformation. The Spinach Puffs come from the scene in which Kuzco is transformed into a llama. Yzma’s lovable henchman, Kronk, makes the Spinach Puffs and brings them out during this scene.

There isn’t any mention of what is in the spinach puffs or how they are made. All we know about them is what they look like and that they are easy to make, according to Kronk.

So, what’s in an Incan spinach puff anyway?
The first question I had was, “Are spinach puffs in any way shape or form Incan?” Eh, no, not really. One food blogger, The Gluttonous Geek, notes that the Incas didn’t have any wheat -- for pastry -- or spinach. To try and make as authentic an Incan version of Kronk’s spinach puffs as possible, The Gluttonous Geek used masa harina -- a flour made with corn -- and made spinach and cheese filled Arepas. Arepas is a dish that she explains comes from North Columbia -- close enough to where the Incas were to maybe influence Kronk. So, the blogger made slightly more authentic Spinach Puffs. Awesome!

But. . . what was the movie going for? What’s a Spinach Puff? I tried to find the origin of spinach puffs as they appear in the movie, but had no luck. (If anyone has a clue, let me know). The closest food that I know of -- as a person with Greek-Cypriot roots -- is Spanakopita, a spinach pie usually made with phyllo dough and usually filled with a mixture of spinach, onions, feta cheese, egg, and other seasonings. So, Kronk’s spinach puffs are like a weirdly shaped Spanakopita made with puff pastry instead of phyllo? At least, that’s what I took from it.

The Recipe
Kronk tells Yzma the spinach puffs are  easy to make. They are, really. Even if you are someone without much cooking experience, there aren’t too many places you can go wrong. Also, they’re super adaptable. You can put almost anything you want in them, really, so long as you include spinach. I ended up using frozen spinach, because that was what I could get, but fresh would work too, maybe even better. I also used whatever cheese and dairy options I was able to get at the time, and I figured I would test to see what worked. I’d definitely recommend you use feta cheese, perhaps replace the ricotta and/or sour cream and add about ¼ to ½ cup crumbled. I wasn’t able to get my hands on any -- so my Greek-Cypriot ancestors will be coming for me in my dreams to scold me for making something so far removed from its inspirational origin.

If you have dietary restrictions, you could try other cheeses and sour creams (like dairy-free or lactose-free), but I don’t have any experience with those, so I can’t say if they’d work or not. The same goes for leaving out or replacing the egg. It acts as a binder, so you could try simply skipping it if you can’t eat eggs (especially if you are using some kind of creamy cheese), and your mixture just won’t hold together quite as well, but it won’t affect much else. Again, though, I haven’t tried it. So, if anyone does have some experience with substituting out ingredients, let us know!

I used a 13.2 oz. package of refrigerated puff pastry. However, I found that I really needed about 1 ½ times that, or maybe double. With 13.2 oz. of puff pastry I made 12 spinach puffs. With the leftover filling, I probably could have made at least another eight.

The Spinach Puffs themselves were great! I don’t know how Yzma doesn’t like these flaky and buttery pouches of savory spinach goodness. The filling was cheesy but tasted fresh thanks to the addition of the sour cream and parsley. The puff pastry went well with the filling, providing a delicate crispy exterior and an extra richness from the butter.

(Note: I realized after I made them that Kronk’s puffs are actually quite pale in color. So, it might be more accurate to skip the egg wash if you would like to replicate the paleness.)

Here’s the list of ingredients I could get my hands on:

 * 1 lb frozen spinach
 * Half a medium onion
 * Three cloves of garlic
 * 2 tbsp of chopped parsley
 * ¼ cup of cream cheese
 * 6 tbsp of ricotta
 * 3 tbsp of sour cream
 * ¼ cup of unpacked parmesan
 * 2 eggs (one for egg wash, if you want)
 * 2 tbsp of olive oil
 * ½ tbsp of butter
 * Puff pastry
 * Salt and pepper to taste
 * Flour for dusting

Method
1. First, find and pull the correct lever to enter your secret la-- I mean kitchen, and begin! And don’t forget to hum your own theme song. It’s very important.

2. Since my spinach was frozen, I decided to boil it to cook it. (If yours is fresh, you could chop it up, wash it, and fry it in a pan -- still wet so the extra moisture will wilt it -- with the onions that we’ll cook later in step 5.) Bring enough water to submerge your spinach to a boil, and boil the frozen spinach for two minutes or until the spinach is tender.

3. Drain the spinach very, very well. Moisture is the enemy! We don’t want our Spinach Puffs crying and soaked in the middle of a great puddle. I put my spinach in a sieve (since my colanders’ holes were too wide) and pressed it with a spatula to remove as much water as I could. Let it drain a while too, about ten minutes for good measure. 4. Chop up the drained spinach. So long as you chop it small enough to mix well with the cheeses and seasonings, how chunky you want the filling to be is up to you. Kronk’s filling looks very uniform, so I chopped mine up quite small. Also, go ahead and chop the half a medium onion, the three garlic cloves, and the parsley.

5. Heat the oil and butter in a pan over medium heat, and add the onion and garlic. Fry them, stirring frequently, until the onion is translucent and starting to become brown. (It’s really up to you how much you want your onion fried. Personally, I think caramelized would be nice, but I was too lazy to stand there and stir for twenty minutes.)

6. Add the spinach and fry them all together to get rid of any lingering moisture. After about ten minutes, take the pan off the heat. (I got paranoid and put the spinach back on the heat for another five minutes, but I doubt it really made a difference.) 7. Mix together the cheeses, sour cream, parsley, and one egg. Add the spinach, onion, and garlic mixture after it has cooled for ten minutes or so, and mix them together with the cheese mixture thoroughly. Season the filling mixture with salt and pepper to taste. 8. Unroll your puff pastry onto a surface dusted with flour. If it is thick, roll it out with a rolling pin until quite thin, about two millimeters thick. Cut your pastry into two inch squares. (Mine came out uneven. I was never good with neat measurements.)

9. Put a slightly heaped tablespoon of filling into the middle of each square, and flatten and spread it just a tiny bit, so that it becomes more of a diagonal oval. 10. Beat an egg for egg wash, and with either a pastry brush, your fingers, or whatever else you have, brush two adjoining edges of each pastry square with the egg. 11. Bring the edges with the egg wash together and press them tightly to seal the spinach puff’s shape. This is a very important step. If you don’t seal them tightly, they’ll burst like an angry Yzma (like some of mine did . . .). Then, gently pat the joined edges down so they don’t stick up.

At this point you may be wondering, “Two famous fantasy and film food creators, Binging with Babish and Rosanna Pansino also recreated Kronk’s spinach puffs. So what do you bring to the Kronk’s spinach puffs recreation conversation? Why are you creating this recipe?”

Well, if you look closely at Kronk’s puffs, you’ll notice that they have a perfect round circle on the side that shows the filling. Both Babish and Rosanna leave corners on that end of the spinach puff. I cut the corners off to imitate the movie more. Genius, right? (No, the correct answer is no.)

So, why?



Well, ya got me. By all accounts, it doesn’t make sense.

Anyway: 12. Gently move the formed puffs onto a baking tray lined with parchment paper. (I also baked their little cut-off-corner brethren next to them.) Then, put the tray with the puffs in the fridge for twenty minutes to get the pastry cold again so it won’t lose too much butter and become soggy.

13. Bake them for 12-15 minutes in the middle rack at 425 degrees Fahrenheit.

14. Take them out of the oven and finish the job (eat them). But be careful not to burn your mouth. The filling is hot!

Remember, the filling is versatile, so if you want to put in different cheeses or maybe bacon or other vegetables, go for it! Just make sure whatever you put in doesn’t have too much moisture, or it will make your pastry soggy. Now you can chow down on some spinach puffs whenever you want like one hungry king of the world! So long as you can avoid getting turned into a llama or roped into disposing of a llama’s unconscious body, of course.





(Look at that crispy bottom! I think even Mary Berry would be quite pleased with that.)