I loves me spinach
Like Popeye, I loves me spinach.
Raw or cooked...alone or in recipes with other ingredients.
It's a versitile veggie that goes with all kins of other flavors from sweet to savory. But, on top of all that, it's good for you.
Like other green, leafy vegetables, it's high in iron (though not in the way the cartoons would lead us to believe) and calcium. These vitamins are more easily absorbed into the body through the green leafy vegetables.
The dish I made for today also included pine nuts and golden raisins.
Pine nuts really are the seeds of pine trees...the things squirrels eat. Often the ones you find in grocery stores are imported from abroad, but in the US, they are havested by Native Americans who have a treaty that was negotiated in Nevada that gives tribes the right to harvest the pine nuts for culinary uses.
Golden raisins are no different than the dark raisins except that they are oven dried to keep the color light and sometimes treated with sulfur dioxide to make them lighter in color as well.
In this case, the golden raisins just look pretty against the dark green spinach leaves and their wrinkly skin looks good with the smooth pine nits.
So, what we have here is a delicious and beautiful dish.Spinach with Pine Nuts and Golden Raisins
2 teaspoons of olive oil2 tablespoon of golden raisins
1 tablespoon of pine nuts
2 cloves of garlic, minced
1 10-ounce bag of spinach (not baby spinach, which is too tender)
2 teaspoons of balsamic vinegar
1/8 teaspoon of salt
1 tablespoon of shaved Parmesan cheese
Freshly ground pepper, to taste
- Heat the oil in a large skillet over medium-high heat.
- Add the raisins, the pine nuts and the garlic. Cook, stirring, until the mixture is fragrant (for about 30 seconds).
- Add the spinach and cook, stirring, until it's just wilted (about 2 minutes).
- Remove from the heat and stir in the vinegar and the salt.
- Sprinkle with Parmesan cheese and pepper and serve it immediately.
