We can’t help but remember the joy of watching Popeye the Sailor series with his famous “I’m strong to the “finich”, ’cause I eats me spinach” line. In the cartoon, in the most desperate moments, Popeye would eat a can of spinach and immediately transform into a pile of muscle, thanks to the iron content of the leafy greens. The irony is that it turned out that the creators of the project had found faulty calculations of the mineral composition of the spinach (a scientist misplaced one decimal point in his measurements back in 1870s) and built the whole thing around wrong data.
But it didn’t really matter. Everybody loved Popeye, even kids increased their vegetable consumption after watching cartoons, and spinach sales soared. But canned spinach is quite bland, it definitely needs some extra flavours, as many as possible. If you ever get a can of spinach, try to cook it with the following schema in mind. Add some fat and umamin to it – choose bacon, chicken, butter. Add some classic seasoning like onion, garlic, ginger (don’t forget about salt and pepper). Add some heat – reach for cayenne pepper or your favourite hot sauce. And top it off with acid of your choice – citrus juice or vinegar. An even more straightforward way is to open a can and transfer its contents in a pot. Do not drain. Set a burner to a medium-high heat, and wait until everything warms up, then toss in 50 gr / 2 Tbsp of butter and pour a splash of lemon juice. Wait until the butter melts, add 3-5 cut bacon strips. Stir well, season with garlic powder and salt, enjoy and imagine how your muscles grow bigger.
Admittedly, nowadays fresh spinach is more in vogue. The easiest way to deal with it is, first of all, to saute 3 cloves of sliced garlic in olive oil and, secondly, add 2 large handfuls of greens, packing it with your hand a bit. Try to press spinach and coat in oil and garlic. Season, and continue sauteing for 2-3 minutes until it wilts and loses volume. Serve immediately. Better with fried ground beef or inside a grilled cheese sandwich.
Because spinach is a mild-flavoured green, it’s so versatile and powerful in salads, pasta, curries. As for the latter, you should definitely try cooking creamed spinach. You’ll need a can of coconut milk and 200 g / 8 oz of spinach. Add these two to a pot, stir and cook over medium heat until spinach is wilted. Remove from the heat and blend in pulses until smooth but not homogenous (you want some small green pieces). Saute 1 diced onion, 2 minced cloves of garlic, and 1 Tbsp of grated ginger in a pan over medium heat for 5 minutes. Add 2 tsp of ground cumin, 1 tsp of garam masala (substitute with curry powder if you wish), ½ tsp of turmeric, ½ tsp of cayenne pepper, warm the spices, stirring for 2 minutes. Then add 1 diced tomato and 50 ml / ¼ cup of water, cook until the tomato is broken down, then add the spinach mixture, heat everything through, season with salt and pepper and serve. This dish will taste only better with hot oily garlic naan, crispy paratha, leavened poori, or even good ol’ baguette, no matter what bread you are using, you won’t be disappointed in the gravy.
What do you think?