Wednesday, August 22, 2007

Simple Spinach Surprise


Here's a simple spinach dish I concocted a while back. I was happy with this one because I expected very little but it turned out surprisingly well. Very easy to prepare.

Ingredients:
spinach (and loads of it)
red bell peppers (paprika to some people)
garlic
black olives
freshly-ground black pepper
Worcestershire sauce
virgin olive oil (just enough to brown the garlic)

1. Roast the bell peppers in the convection oven, turning occasionaly, until the skin starts to brown on all sides and the peppers are soft. If you have a paper bag, put the roasted peppers in the bag and crumple the top; if you don't, just leave the peppers in the oven after you turn it off. The idea is to let the peppers steam and sweat-- this'll make the skin easy to peel later on

2. Peel the skin off of the roasted peppers. This can be time-consuming, but, believe me, it's worth it. Throw away the seeds and juilienne the flesh (yeah, I did a poor job).

3. In a skillet (or wok), heat the oil and fry the black pepper until you can smell it. Sautee the garlic (I just halve or quarter the cloves) until it starts to soften but not yet brown. Add the roasted peppers and olives. This'll cool down the pan, so allow the heat to build up to sauteeing heat.

4. Add the spinach and a few dashes of Worcestershire sauce and cook until it starts to wilt, then turn off the heat. Don't let them wilt totally-- the remaining heat will do that. You'll see that the spinach will be a small fraction of the original bulk. You can see from the picture that I underestimated my endpoint remaining spinach.

Goes great with grilled meat or fish.

2 comments:

diyowel said...

that's a graet spinach idea for popeye fans. we used to make laing out of spinach and canned coconut milk back in riyadh and believe me, u won't tell the diference from taro leaves. just throw in a little shrimp paste, crushed fresh ginger and allow to simmer slowly. voila! the best laing outside the archipelago!

xsaltire said...

Wow, laing using spinach. I never would've thought of that; necessity is indeed the mother of invention. On hindsight it make sense-- wilted spinach has the same texture as cooked taro leaves.