sor­ry, frozen spinach

A few weeks ago I gave you my recipe for spinach casse­role in which I uttered the immor­tal, and so fool­ish, words “Do not use fresh.” I could just die.

Here’s the orig­i­nal recipe, but then read on so I can change it for you. Yet anoth­er exam­ple of the unfor­tu­nate but true adage: if there’s a way to make some­thing more labor-inten­sive, you can bet your fam­i­ly will pre­fer it. Sigh.

Lau­rie Col­win’s Spinach Casserole
(serves 8)

First of all, a word about the spinach itself. Do not use fresh. In my opin­ion, there is only one pur­pose in life for frozen spinach and this is it. Now, in Amer­i­ca, frozen spinach comes in lit­tle square-ish flat box­es. You need two of these. In Eng­land, how­ev­er, frozen spinach comes in bags, in which you will find intrigu­ing sort of hock­ey-puck shapes. For this, you need about 1 pound.

1 lb frozen spinach
6 tbsps butter
4 tbsps flour
1 medi­um onion, minced
4 cloves gar­lic, minced
6 ounces evap­o­rat­ed milk
8 ounces any sharp cheese, like cheddar
sprin­kling of chili flakes (or in Amer­i­ca you can use jalapeno Mon­terey Jack cheese)
1 tbsp cel­ery salt (essen­tial!)
3/4 cup fresh breadcrumbs
3/4 cup grat­ed parmesan

Spray a 9x9 glass dish with non­stick spray. Believe me, you don’t want to skip this step. Then put the spinach in a saucepan, cov­er with water, and boil till cooked, but don’t over­cook. In the mean­time, melt the but­ter in a heavy saucepan and then add the flour, and let bub­ble for about two min­utes to cook the floury taste away. Add the minced onion and gar­lic and saute till soft, but do not burn the floury but­ter. When your spinach is cooked, drain off the water, but into a mea­sur­ing cup, till you have 1 cup liq­uid. Dis­card the remain­der. Slow­ly add the liq­uid to the onion and gar­lic, and stir till thick. Add the evap­o­rat­ed milk, the cheese, the chili flakes, the cel­ery salt, and stir until cheese is melt­ed. Pour the mix­ture into the glass dish and top first with bread­crumbs and then with cheese. Bake at 400 degrees for half an hour, or until bub­bly and browned on top. Heaven.

******

All right.

This after­noon, as I was hav­ing my fin­ger acupunc­tured (more on that lat­er, spinach is more impor­tant), I lay in dark­ness, Chi­nese music play­ing all round, can­dles flick­er­ing, and my thoughts turned nat­u­ral­ly enough to… spinach. Name­ly, that I had a bag full of baby spinach leaves in my fridge, had used only a tiny num­ber for my OCD chick­en dish over the week­end, what to do? Spinach casse­role? But, my near­ly uncon­scious mind reit­er­at­ed, “Do not use fresh.” How to rebel from one’s own recipe self? I knew it could be done.

So I rushed home and put a table­spoon of but­ter in my large skil­let, threw in the spinach, which looked an enor­mous amount, poured on a 1/2 cup water, slapped a lid on and put the heat on under it. A scant two min­utes lat­er and there was NOTH­ING LEFT. All those leaves, noth­ing. So I went on with the rest of the recipe, only halv­ing the amount of flour and evap­o­rat­ed milk, owing to the cow­ard­ly amount of spinach.

Then, I real­ized I had only gruyere cheese. Threw it in. The whole spinach leaves, too. Not chopped at all. I served it with trep­i­da­tion but… howls of delight. Avery asks only that the stems be removed, because “they occu­py a sep­a­rate part of my mouth from the leaves,” and I have to agree. Sor­ry, frozen spinach, your offi­cial LAST rea­son for exis­tence has been… sim­mered away.