{ 2009 02 19 }

Wilted spinach salad

It doesn’t happen often, but sometimes I really do just want a salad for dinner. The boys ate more of the chickpea and spinach curry — Ernest ate his with rice, my dashing husband preferred it with toasted walnut bread — while I used the just-picked spinach from our farm box to make this slightly wilted spinach salad. I found a nub of buttermilk blue cheese in the cheese drawer. It was covered with a nice thick carpet of fussy gray which I carved away to reveal a bit of perfectly edible and tasty cheese. I’m not going to die, am I? Or, more precisely, that cheese isn’t going to kill me, is it?

Wilted spinach salad when you have no bacon

Thoroughly pick over, wash and dry a bunch of spinach leaves. I like to then cut them into strips for easier eating down the road — plus it helps me fit more leaves in the bowl.

Heat 3 Tbsp. olive oil in a small frying pan over medium-high heat or, if you’re feeling kicky and don’t want dinner to be too terribly healthy and feel like a treat and happen to have some duck fat in the fridge, melt 3 Tbsp. of that instead.

Cook a clove of garlic or, in this case, three chopped up green garlics in the oil, add salt and cook until the garlic is soft. Add 1 Tbsp. sherry or balsamic vinegar. Swirl to combine everything and pour it over the salad. Quickly toss salad and then put a plate or pot lid over the bowl to let the leaves wilt a bit more. Let it sit a few minutes while you toast some bread or chop some nuts to add to it or do a little dance in the privacy of your kitchen. Add plenty of freshly ground black pepper, some crumbled blue cheese, and a handful or so of chopped walnuts or pine nut if you’re so inclined.

Posted by Molly Watson on Thursday, February 19th, 2009, at 4:28 pm, and filed under cooked it, salad, spinach.

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