There have been no postings here for a while, but that is not because River Cottage cooking hasn't been a priority. My first port of call is always a River Cottage cookbook. And to a minor extend the River Cottage way of life; I have planted a small vegetable garden in a raised bed with a few veggies in it. So now I have a variety of freshly-picked vegetables - including lots and lots of spinach. So I went to my every faithful River Cottage Veg book and looked up spinach in the index and found a recipe I had never tried - and, unusually, there is not a picture of it in the book. Which is perhaps why it never caught my eye.
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| No Cumin!!! |
First I had to fry up an onion. I haven't bought onions for a while in the hope that our own will soon be ready, so the last one I had was a bit, well, past its sell-by date. But by stripping off all the outer layers there was enough onion to use. Next to find the cumin from my carefully alphabeticized shelves but, horror of horrors, there was a space between Coriander Seeds and Dill. A quick shuffle round and I found Garam Masala - well, that has Cumin in it at least... And then I went out to pick some garlic from our garden...
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| Garlic growing |
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| 150g spinach in the pan |
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| Our very own garlic |
Now the fun bit which is picking 150g of spinach. Anyone who has ever weighed spinach knows that you need a big pan to hold even the smallest weight. I went outside and gleaned all the spinach I could find and came in a found it weighed a tad under 150g even though there was almost a washing up bowl of the stuff.
After cooking I had a taste. It seems almost unbelievable now, but I used to taste something I had cooked and not think - hmmm, this could do with a bit of extra xxxx. I have become more adventurous with adding a bit more of this or that to improve the flavour. So this time I thought it needed a little more lemon and as I was using juice and not lemon zest as the recipe said, I just gave a squirt more from the Jiffy lemon and that made all the difference.
John had lamb chops with it and I had it with pitta bread. It was a great success, both with the lamb and without. Overall an easy recipe and one I would definitely make again.
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| With lamb... |
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| and without. |
