Eat Spinach, Not Kale
Recently, the general public, especially younger people in the cities, have begun to embrace strong flavors previously thought of as icky, like bitterness, fermentation, funk, fat and umami, which are now all prized flavors. This is good. But Americans, as always, are unable to do anything in moderation, and, hypnotized by the constant racket of food television, food blogs, restaurant blogs, and have-you-tried-this, insist that if strong flavors can be good, then even stronger flavors must be better. This is why we can’t have a hoppy IPA; we have to have the hoppiest quadruple-IPA science can concoct. We can’t have a normal bowl of chili; we have to bump up the savory flavor with umami-heavy ingredients like marmite, soy sauce, and anchovies, and who cares if those flavors work together? And we can’t use spinach anymore, because there are greens that are stronger and more bitter, and thus better, like kale. Eating spinach is something your parents would do. Eating kale — stringy, bitter, aggressive kale — is the mark of an adventurous, flavor-forward connoisseur.
Kale is a perfectly fine ingredient, but its bitterness and toughness have become indicators of quality to a certain segment of Americans, rather than characteristics to be overcome through cooking. And that’s led to its usage as a trendy ingredient in weird new places. But: Dishes do not usually become better or even more interesting when a trendy ingredient or process is foisted onto them. They almost always become worse. For example: the classic spinach, bacon, and egg salad, familiar to anyone who’s ever been to a steakhouse. This is a classic for a reason. The flavors and textures work beautifully, each individual ingredient holding its own. Replace the spinach with kale, and everything’s thrown off. Typically, the hot vinaigrette slightly wilts the spinach, adding a new flavor and texture, but kale is much tougher and won’t even notice that a hot vinaigrette has been added. Kale’s raw flavor, unchanged by the dressing, will thus overwhelm the egg and bacon.
That’s not to say that kale is a bad ingredient; it just needs to be used thoughtfully. Kale is in the brassica family, like collards, so it’s related to cabbage, broccoli, and brussels sprouts. It’s not related to spinach, which is in the beet family. The greens in the beet family, which also include chard, are more delicate and tender than the brassica greens; they cook much more quickly and can be eaten raw, without the rigamarole of massage (and I’d argue that no matter how thorough the massage, raw kale never attains an appropriately tender texture). The stems of beet-family greens are also edible and delicious, even the tougher chard stems (which take well to roasting and pickling).
Spinach comes in a few different forms. Probably the most common on grocery store shelves is bagged baby spinach. Never buy this. (Never buy any bagged green, now that I think about it. They go bad within a day of being opened, and are typically several times more expensive than the non-bagged kind.) If you can get real spinach from the farmers market, the kind with the little pink caps on the roots still attached, do that, but totally usable tasty spinach is also available year-round in grocery stores. It should come in a bundle, and in probably two types: one is very dark green and has curled edges around the leaves; this is called savoy spinach. The other is slightly lighter and has flat leaves, like a larger version of baby spinach. I tend to prefer savoy if I’m cooking it for awhile, and flat-leaf if I’m eating it raw, or doing a real quick cook.
In the fall and winter, I pretty much stick wholly to cooking with greens; they become hearty and filling and satisfying, just what you want in cold weather. Let’s start the recipe section off with a pretty simple lentil soup with spinach.
To start, saute a chopped onion and about five cloves of garlic in olive oil in a heavy soup pot or dutch oven. While that’s softening, take one bunch of flat-leaf spinach and chop it. I like to keep the stems all tied up the way it came at the grocery store and then just chop the leaves into slices about half an inch wide. Chopping spinach is key for wilting, which is what we’ll be doing here; you don’t want a huge drippy slimy leaf of spinach, you want it to break down into almost a sauce. Throw them in a colander, wash, and either spin dry or let sit.
When the onion is translucent, throw in maybe a spoonful of ground coriander. Stir the onions around to fry the coriander; a bunch of stuff will stick to the pan, which is fine. Add a cup of split red lentils (do NOT substitute any other kind of lentils, the recipe will not work) and about three cups of water or chicken stock or vegetable stock. Bring to a boil, then lower the heat and cover it. Cook for about forty-five minutes, stirring every five or ten minutes, until the lentils have broken down and no longer look like lentils. When done, season heavily with salt and pepper, then put in your entire bunch of spinach. This will look like too much spinach! It is not too much spinach. Add maybe a handful at a time, stirring until it wilts enough to add in the next handful. When done, squeeze about half a lemon’s worth of lemon juice into the soup. Serve with pita.
I also love spinach tacos! These are totally non-traditional, but who cares. First, you’ll have to make your pickles. Either with a mandoline (best option) or a knife, slice one whole red onion into paper thin slices. Scatter them in a glass storage container. In a saucepot, bring a cup of apple cider vinegar and a quarter cup of sugar to a boil, and when it boils, pour it over the onion and loosely cover. Let it sit out and cool while you do the rest of your work.
In a dutch oven, saute a sliced (not diced) onion and a few cloves of garlic in olive oil until translucent, then dash in a bit of cumin and dried chile powder (or flakes) and stir to fry and coat. When fragrant, add in a whole bunch of spinach, sliced and washed exactly the way you did it for the lentil soup, but you can use the savoy variety for this one. Mix that all up until it starts to wilt, then pour in about a quarter cup of beer (I usually use some kind of mild pale beer like Presidente). Stir hard with a spatula to deglaze all the good stuff on the bottom, then cover and lower heat and cook until the spinach is done but not mush — about five to ten minutes, or however long it takes you to finish the rest of the beer you opened. Then season with salt to taste.
To serve: throw some corn tortillas on a hot dry cast iron pan to brown, then place a glob of spinach on the tortilla, followed by some queso fresco (or feta), some chopped cilantro, a few pickled onions, a squeeze of lime, and some hot sauce of your choosing. (JK, you don’t get to choose. Use Tapatio.)
Finally, let’s move to the north of India for saag paneer. Chop and wash spinach as before. If you have a mortar and pestle, throw in a few cloves of garlic, one chile (serrano or chile de arbol or Thai birds-eye would be good), and about a thumb’s worth of peeled and loosely chopped ginger, and smash thoroughly into a paste. (If you don’t have a mortar and pestle, toss everything in the food processor until it’s a paste.) In a heavy-bottomed pan, add some vegetable oil and then this paste, frying to add a little color, then add about a teaspoon of garam masala mix. Toast that until fragrant, then add in the spinach and cook until soft, maybe five or ten minutes. From here you can do a few things: you can add coconut milk or cream to make it richer (I usually don’t), and you can either puree this in the food processor or not (I usually do; I like a very smooth saag).
If you want to make your own paneer, it’s easier than you’d think; you basically just curdle milk with lemon juice and then press the curds together. (This is a good basic recipe.) Saag paneer also works well with tofu, which is basically just paneer but made with soymilk instead of cow milk. Sear your paneer or tofu in oil, then mix with the saag. Serve over rice.
Spinach may not be cool, but I hope it stays that way, because it costs about two bucks for a huge bundle and it’s delicious, healthful, and tremendously flexible and easy to work with — easier, by a long shot, than kale. A good cook will think about ingredients and methods, what those ingredients are best at and what they’re not so good at, and use them accordingly, rather than blindly following food trends to their illogical extreme. And a good cook will also use spinach. Because spinach is so tasty.
Crop Chef is a column about the correct ways to prepare and consume plant matter, by Dan Nosowitz, a freelance human who enjoys hot salads and lives in Brooklyn, naturally.
Photo by David Wagoner