Spinach or chard with potatoes garlic and olive oil Istrian way Recipe

Spinach or chard with garlic and extra virgin olive oil is a peasant dish, hearty, rustic and nutritious. It is extremely easy to make, inexpensive and with its humble appearance it most certainly offers a lot more than meets the eye.

It is a perfect side dish to any grilled or fried fish, but equally delicious with pork, lamb or chicken and accompanied with fried egg makes a great vegetarian meal option.

Back home, on the Slovenian coast, this dish is a most frequent companion to grilled fish and grilled or deep fried squid, a bit like fish and chips and mushy peas in the United Kingdom.

Spinach or chard with garlic and olive oil is very popular in Dalmatia and on Dalmatian islands (Croatia) where it is believed it originated from. It is on this islands, where tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers and other summer vegetables are abundant during the summer, that chard would be the only green leaf vegetable that could grow during the scorching summer heat therefore it has been a very treasured vegetable containing a lot of vitamins and minerals and a lot of water make it very hydrating and easy to digest.

This dish travelled north along Dalmatian coastline to Istria where it has become as popular as in Dalmatia and is found on the menus in most restaurants and cooked in almost every household.

This is another dish that is part of my childhood and adulthood, it never came into the fashion, it never went out of the fashion, it has simply always been there...

I am sharing here my family recipe.

Ingredients

Serves 4-6 as part of meal

• 1kg spinach, baby spinach or chard

• 400-450g potatoes, peeled and cubed

• 4 cloves of garlic, peeled

• 5 Tbs extra virgin olive oil (the best you can afford)

• sea salt

Method

Wash thoroughly spinach or chard, (no need to do so if bought already washed version) cut off the stalks and chop or just tear the leafs with your hands into smaller pieces. If you are not using the stalks for this recipe you can use them for vegetable minestrone, put them on a compost or simply discard.

If using chard remove tough centre stalks.

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Place cubed potatoes in a pan, add water, a pinch of salt and boil until just tender, for about 10 minutes. Drain and set aside.

Fill a large pot with ¼ of hot water, add spinach or chard and cook only for few minutes until wilted.

Drain very well in a colander. When the spinach is in a colander, press down with a back of a wooden spoon to remove a bit of excess water. You can use a big colander to drain both potatoes and chard.

Rinse quickly and dry the pot where you cooked the spinach, add extra virgin olive oil and garlic.

Fry the garlic on a gentle heat until it becomes softer and golden in colour. The oil will be nicely infused with the garlic.

Remove and discard the garlic.

Add spinach and potatoes to the pan with garlic infused oil and sautéed on a medium heat for about 15 minutes, stirring occasionally or until you get a nice velvety consistency and you loose most of the water from the spinach.

Adjust the seasoning with sea salt and serve hot or at the room temperature.

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Just a thought

This vegetable side dish has a delicate garlicky flavour. If you are a big fan of garlic and keen on stronger garlicky taste, add crushed garlic to extra virgin olive oil without removing it instead of adding the whole garlic and removing it after the oil has been infused like suggested in the recipe.

You can also prepare this dish by cooking the potatoes and the spinach or chard in one big pot together rather then separately. Use one big pot, boil cubed potatoes first until just tender then add spinach or chard and cook until wilted, drain both in big colander.

My mum's Creamed spinach (without cream) recipe

Creamed spinach is one of my absolute favourite side dishes and it is one of those recipes that you will go back to time and time again. Spinach is a beautiful leafy plant but it is sometimes an unsung hero of dinner greens. It is quick and easy to make, perfect to introduce as a vegetable dish during midweek or to serve along those special weekend meat roasts. It is very tasty, nutritious, healthy and accompanies really nicely just about any fish or meat dish.

Spinach cooked this way was the one I loved most as a child, and I could never get enough of it, I could literally eat it out of pan with a spoon, nothing much has changed. And of course, I was never told off for eating too much of it! Definitely worth giving it a go if you have children (and adults) that are not so kin on vegetables.

My mother made creamed spinach very often for me and my brother when we were little during the week as a quick meal together with mashed potatoes and fried egg. This vegetable side dish is very popular back home and still served as part of school meals just as it used to be. It is reassuring to know that some things just haven't changed...

Ingredients

Serves 2-4 as part of meal

• 2 Tbsp extra virgin olive oil

• 1 clove of garlic, peeled

• 500g of baby spinach (washed and ready to use) You can use other varieties of spinach or Swiss chard in which case you remove the stalks

• 2 Tbsp all-purpose flour

• 250 ml milk (semi skimmed or full fat)

• sea salt

• nutmeg, freshly grated (optional)

Method

First of all you need to wash the spinach thoroughly if you bought it unwashed. If you are using the spinach that has been washed already and is ready to use just skip the following step.

The best way to wash the spinach is to put it in a sink or large container of cold water. Swish leaves around and than let them stand for a few minutes allowing the dirt to sink to the bottom.

Place washed spinach in a big pot and pour over boiling hot water. If you prefer you can bring a large pot of water to a rolling boil and then add the spinach. In both cases you need to push the leaves down to completely submerge them in the water.

Blanch the spinach for about 40 seconds to a minute (blanching is most often used as an intermediary step for a dish and it means giving greens, in this case spinach, a quick cook in hot water to cook them through and soften them).

Place a large colander in a sink, drain the spinach and run it under cold water just for few seconds. This will stop the cooking immediately (and retain the nutrients) but it will also help to cool down the spinach.

Let the spinach cool completely for few minutes and drain as much as you can. You want to remove as much excess liquid as you can (spinach contains quite a lot of water). I do this in batches by taking small handfuls of spinach and squeeze it very well. I end up with few balls of very well drained spinach.

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Transfer drained spinach on a chopping board and chop quite finely.

Put the extra virgin olive oil and peeled clove of garlic in a saucepan. Infuse the oil with the garlic on a medium-low heat and when the garlic turns nice golden colour remove it from the saucepan and discard it. Be careful not to burn it, trust me this is easily done.

Add the flour and cook briefly, stirring constantly, until the flour turns golden colour.

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Add chopped spinach and stir well so the spinach is mixed well with the flour mixture. At this point the spinach mixture might stick to the bottom a bit, do not worry if this is the case.

Start pouring gradually the milk, stirring and mixing constantly, incorporating well. Season with salt and add some freshly grated nutmeg, if using, and cook further for about 5-7 minutes on a gentle heat, stirring constantly. By this time you should end up with a lovely thickened creamed spinach. If it does look a bit watery give it another minute or so.

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Just a thought

If you prepare this dish in advance it might get a bit thick. When heating up just pour in gradually a little bit more milk and stir constantly until you get the desired consistency.