Easy spinach recipe

I confess that I am not neutral when it comes to spinach. Although as a child I loved the watch the cartoons with Popeye the sailor, I wasn't such a blind admirer to follow his eating habits too, mainly his love for spinach. When I started my own foodie adventures, I rather tried to find reasons for not eating it, but somehow it was a very twisted argument: although my warning were scientifically based, it had to do only with the ready made frozen products - which I do not like anyway - and not with the fresh spinach. 

In fact, I was quite afraid to prepare a recipe from scratch. I had no idea how to mix ingredients, for how long to cook the leaves, what spices to add. It is a very common occurence to me, when my lack of experience in tastes and foods operates as a deterrent for improving my cooking skills. But I am brave enough to fight my fears therefore, I decided last week to do from scratch my own recipe of spinach.

The list of ingredients was very easy:

- 150 gr. fresh spinach leaves. I cleaned them throughout under cold and warm water several times and then chopped finely

- 3 big garlic cloves, finelly chopped

- 100 ml. walnut oil

- 1 tablespoon za'atar

- 3 big scallions, finelly chopped

- 100 ml. butter milk

- 50 gr. Emmentaler cheese, shredded

Preparation time: 15 minutes

Directions:

Add the oil, za'atar, garlic and scallions in a pan heated at 250C. Mix well for around 5 minutes. Add the spinach leaves, batch by batch, and mix every time well. At the end, add the butter milk and the Emmentaler, and keep mixing. The dairy ingredients will give a special milk consistency to the ingredients.

Cooking time: 15 minutes

To be eaten warm, with some tomatoes slices, for the decoration and more freshness too. It can be accompanied by meat, pasta, and even fish. I personally eat it as a stand alone meal, but I was so excited by the results that I was hardly thinking about any foodie match.

Right now, I feel that I have so many open options to try that most probably I will keep sharing even more spinach-based recipes in the next weeks!

Bon Appétit!

What's wrong with my spinach?

I am not a very big supporter of spinach, but the main reason is that besides the classical frozen type with eggs, I have no other idea how to eat it. As a kid, I was offered the glorious example of Popeye the sailor as a possible evolution in my adulthood, but I was rather Olive's type.

Lately, we are fighting hard to eat as healthy as possible, and we try at least once the week a new green salad. I noticed that spinach leaves cannot be find easily in Berlin, and the box frozen variant doesn't look too healthy for me. At a Turkish grocery store I spotted a plastic box with fresh spinach leaves, and bought it. I only hesitate if one box will be enough or maybe we will be so in love with the green menu that will want to eat over and over again and we will not find enough spinach in Berlin to feed us.

Happy, with the box of spinach on the top of the kitchen table, we started to worry. How will be eat it? Raw, like the rabbits, or in combination with some other veggies? Would we want to make a smoothie too? 

Creative as usual, I cleaned some leaves, added some pomegranate and some boiled couscous and started to eat. My childhood intuition was not wrong. Raw or boiled, with eggs or pomegranates, spinach is not my type of taste. And left the half eaten salad in the fridge for the next days.

After a couple of days, an unpleasant metallic smell was left in the air every time we were opening the fridge. Tried several times to figure out what it is all about, but failed to identify the cause. Exasperated, I started to smell one by one the bowls and the guilt was exclusively to our spinach leaves. 

How dangerous are the oxalates

Curious to understand what happened, I did some intensive research the days after. The real story goes that spinach is very rich in iron, hence the metallic smell I felt in my fridge. What was subject of debate and scientific consideration in the case of spinach was the oxalic acid, which can be found equally in kale, chard or parsley. In the case of spinach, though, there is the highest concentration, of around 750 milligrams/100 grams. 

One of the most frequent warning I noticed, especially in the dedicated German-speaking literature is to avoid reheating the spinach leftover as it has poisonous compounds and can lead to sickness and even death. Honestly, the warning regards probably industrial quantities of spinach, and not the small portion that we usually have for daily consumption.

The oxalic acid is a common chemical compound in plants and animals, and is regularly consumed in very small quantities in different foods, such as nuts, most berries, seeds or leafy greens. The poisoning danger appears only in the case of the consumption in large amounts - probably more than 1 kg./day. A frequent consumption of such foods can lead to kidney stones.

According to the medical evaluations, oxalates, that are fungal in origin and cannot be destroyed by heat, can inhibit calcium absorption. Another possible dangers are tyroid disease and fybromalgia. 

The conclusion(s): eating 'green' doesn't mean necessarily eating 100% healthy, but if it is with measure, everything cannot be but fine.