GO GREEN:Take a leaf out of Popeye's book and cook some spinach, writes Hugo Arnold
Popeye knew he was on to a good thing when he chose silky green spinach as his favourite vegetable. What other leaf can perform so well in a salad, get blanched to a chewy softness in seconds, and wilt to a silky smoothness in a wok?
Piles of these leaves are banked up at my local market at the moment. For supermarket shoppers the baby leaves, pillow-packaged for salads, are one of food technology's successes.
When buying spinach to cook, choose the more adult specimens with the mud and grit still clinging to it; the babies collapse into a pulp.
Butter, cheese and cream all go well with spinach, as do yoghurt and eggs. Olive oil lends a Mediterranean note, along with anchovies, pancetta, nutmeg and pepper.
For a summer salad try grilling or frying sliced aubergine and then tossing spinach and toasted pine nuts with a garlic-laced yoghurt vinaigrette and lots of basil. Eggs Florentine may be old-fashioned but it makes a fine supper.
Stuffing ravioli or fashioning gnocchi sounds like hard work, but the effort is worth it. Combine wilted spinach with ricotta and a generous seasoning of nutmeg, along with salt and pepper, and wrap this mixture in filo pastry, then deep fry the parcels for a snack to serve with drinks.Recipes serve 4