tangentalizingly delicious

Tuesday June 23, 2009

This year, Jen and I finally joined a CSA, an idea we’ve been talking about for a couple of years now. Harvey is a vegetable vacuum, and we figured the third mouth might help us prevent the fridge from being a brief stop on the vegetables’ way to the compost.

Today Jen picked up our first shipment, which due to the moderate temperatures and it being summer consists primarily of spinach, bok choy and young turnips. I’ve had bok choy in chinese food of course, and thanksgiving style turnip preparations but at present I don’t really know what I’m going to do with them.

We also received garlic scapes, which are the big tall above-the-ground part of a garlic bulb. I had never heard of them before a couple of weeks ago when an internet friend in Cleveland mentioned finding some at her local market and preparing them in some fashion or another I’ve since forgotten (but will have to look up).

The spinach in this shipment is not only copious, but fucking delicious. I have in the past frequently enjoyed claiming that baby spinach and mushrooms with generic ranch dressing comprise a spinach salad, so I’m appreciative of the maligned vegetable to begin with, but this stuff is (I may have said) fucking delicious.

Tonight Jen is feeling moderately unwell and Harvey and I were mom-less for supper. I staved his appetite with a plate of vegetables (the usual suspects, which for him are: cucumber, celery, broccoli and cauliflower. He also usually has some baby carrots, but we’re out) and a bowl of berries (straw, rasp and blue).

For me though, I couldn’t get the spinach out of my head (or off my tongue, I guess?) so I made something quite simple but will absolutely be prepared again soon… like, tomorrow:

I took a bit of red onion, coarsely chopped and chopped up a scape pretty roughly. I sauted the two of them together in some olive oil and after a couple of minutes piled on the spinach. I left the spinach only for two or three minutes maybe, just enough to get hot (very hot, as I discovered) but not down to mush. I added pepper and salt and after transferring to a plate, dove in.

Man it was good.

I should have either chopped the scapes more finely or cooked them longer (and before the onion), probably the former although it was nice to have the chunkiness of them.

If I had some goat cheese it would have blown my god damn mind. Goat cheese isn’t something I keep around very much, but if we get another big batch of spinach like this next week I will absolutely treat myself because, well: Blown mind.