Creamed spinach

It has been a while since I busted out Julia and Simca, but I have been making so much spicy Indian food recently that I felt it was time for some French fare. Spring greens are starting to come back into season, so I thought it was time to try some of the wonderful spinach recipes in MtAoFC.

The first and most simple recipe I decided to try is creamed spinach. Julia's recipe is for six people and requires three pounds of spinach, but I figured this will not reheat well and I should just stick to making enough spinach for two people. That's a good thing, because this was a little time intensive.

First, you de-stem the whole pound of spinach. To make a pound of leaves, I just de-stemmed three six-ounce bags and figured the extra was removed by getting rid of the stems (and feeding them to the bunny, of course). This takes a while, and next time I'll probably do it while watching TV or something.

After you de-stem the spinach, you give it a quick boil just to wilt it. Then strain it and run cold water on it to stop the cooking, then more straining. Most of the liquid should be out of it, and you chop it up a bit. It should look like some stuff that Popeye would eat:


After that, it's just a matter of braising the spinach in butter for a few minutes to boil off the excess water, then adding cream little by little until you have beautifully creamy, and very French, creamed spinach.


I was happy that I managed not to stick the spinach to my new stainless steel pots. It was very creamy and soft, and I can finally see why all the de-stemming was necessary. Even the tiny stem nubs that I left were very evident in my spinach mixture; if you left the stems on, the spinach would be "more stem than leaf," which Julia complains of in MtAoFC. This is a very smooth mixture, smoother than I expected. Tasted very spinach-y, but not sulfurous or bitter.

I see some more appetizing-looking spinach recipes with cheese & cream sauce, so I'm looking forward to doing those as spring progresses. If you see me walking around in sailor suits and getting anchor tattoos on my forearm, you'll know why.