Spinach Gratin; roses

This uses fresh spinach rather than my winter staple of frozen spinach.

It’s spring, after all, and spinach is a spring vegetable.

I will admit that I spent a few years loving spinach salads but avoiding cooked spinach. Now I love both.

I don’t know about other places, but here we buy spinach for salad or spinach for cooking. They are, theoretically, interchangeable, but the spinach for cooking is usually more mature, larger, thicker. leaves.

My favorite spinach is grown in my own potager, but I usually have to fight the aphids for it.

This is, again, a recipe I’ve been making for years. I’m using less bread crumbs and cheese than I used to…. due to the fact that I now really love spinach and, also, I don’t work off the extra calories as fast as I used to.

Such is life….. And another easy recipe.

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Spinach Gratin

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Fresh spinach cooks quickly, with a bit of stock to keep it moist. It’s topped with a seasoned mix of bread crumbs and shredded cheese for a quick, healthy side dish.

• Author: Kate
• Prep Time: 5 minutes
• Cook Time: 30 minutes
• Total Time: 35 minutes
• Yield: 2 servings 1x
• Category: Vegetables
• Method: Oven

Ingredients

Scale 1x2x3x

• 12oz (350gr) fresh spinach, roughly chopped
• 1/2 (4oz, 120ml) cup chicken broth
• 1/2 cup shredded cheese
• 1/4 dry bread crumbs
• 1 tsp thyme
• 1 tsp olive oil

Instructions

• Put spinach in oiled baking dish just large enough to hold it. I used  8 X 11 inch (20 X 27.5cm) oval ceramic dish.
• Heat broth and pour over spinach.
• Mix bread crumbs, thyme, cheese and sprinkle over spinach.
• Cover with foil and bake at 375F (190C) for 25 minutes.
• Uncover and bake 5 minutes longer.
• Serve from baking dish.

Notes

To roughly chop spinach: remove any thick stems, pile the leaves up and cut through 2 or 3 times.
I could barely get all the spinach in my dish; I had to press it down. Heating the stock helped it to wilt.
As it bakes, it collapses, and the gratin topping comes together.

Nutrition

• Serving Size: 1/2 recipe
• Calories: 238
• Sugar: 1.8 g
• Sodium: 439.6 mg
• Fat: 13.5 g
• Saturated Fat: 6 g
• Trans Fat: 0.3 g
• Carbohydrates: 17.8 g
• Fiber: 4.5 g
• Protein: 14.5 g
• Cholesterol: 28 mg

Keywords: spinach gratin

I used a mix of cheese – finishing up what was in the fridge. Use your favorite.

I may have mentioned a few hundred times that I only grow food. I plant the vegetables and the herbs. If I can’t eat it I don’t bother.

The flowers that are around our house: roses, geraniums, impatience, etc. are all handled by mon mari.

Although, now that I think about it…. he plants them but I end up doing the watering. You know – ‘as long as your watering….’

I love roses, as does he, and we have beautiful and fragrant roses, chez nous.

But we don’t have any color-changing roses. I don’t see them often, so when I do a grab a photo.

These were particularly lovely:

The bright yellow is such a contrast to the pink. It looks as if they start out yellow, then turn pink as they bloom.

I want to go and look at them every day to see the changes.

I was getting some serious ‘looks’ from the owner of the property, though, so maybe not.