Mashies and Spinach

If you haven't done the CSA thing before, there's something you need to know: the first few weeks are all about greens. Lettuces and cooking greens. Multiple kinds of each. First week was two heads of leaf lettuce, a bag of lettuce, a bag of "micro-greens", spinach, kale, and assorted onions and radishes. That was a couple of weeks ago, but the following weeks haven't been much different.

So you end up eating a lot of salad and cooking a lot of greens. Cooking greens can be quick and simple or long and complex depending on the green in question and how you want to cook it. Some greens, like collards take a lot of prep, while others, like spinach, can pretty much go straight into the pan. Maybe everyone already knows this. I certainly didn't before last year. Learning how to prep and cook greens was a big part of last spring for me.

Which brings us to last Friday's meal. I knew I needed to start cooking some of the greens in the fridge, but I really wasn't in the mood (and didn't have the time) to do the whole prep song-and-dance that goes with kale or collards. Fortunately, we had a big bag of loose-leaf CSA spinach. But greens don't fill you up, so I needed something to go with it. We had some store-bought red potatoes in the pantry, so we decided to make some mashed potatoes to round out the meal.

One more thing that needs mentioning at this point: an odd thing that shows up a lot in the spring CSA deliveries is "garlic scapes". These are long, green tendrils that look kind of like the green ends of scallions, but they are stiffer. They are part of the garlic plant, and thus carry a mild garlic flavor, but they can be a bit weird to use because of their texture. This week I had a batch of scapes, so I decided to throw them into the mashed potatoes and see what happened.

So here it is--last Friday's meal: Mashies & Spinach

Potatoes:
I cut the taters into chunks and put them in water to boil--the usual method for prepping mashed potatoes. In addition, however, I threw all my garlic scapes into the pot with the taters. Once the scapes had softened, I took them out and cut them into small pieces while the potatoes finished cooking. Then, when I mashed the potatoes, I threw the scape pieces in as well. Otherwise, the potato prep was pretty traditional: milk, butter, and salt and lots of mashing with my trusty hand-masher.

Spinach:
Before cooking the greens, I chopped up about 5 cloves of garlic. I put some olive oil in a wok and turned on the heat. Then I tossed in about half the garlic. I like using a wok to cook my greens because the start out taking up a lot of volume, though by the end of it, they cook down quite a bit. My usual method of cooking greens is to add a handful, saute them until they start to shrink, then throw in another handful, and repeat until all the greens are in. Then I tossed in the rest of the garlic, and cooked them just long enough for the last handful of spinach to cook down a little bit. I like my greens cooked just enough, not turned into mush. Once cooked, I put them on the plate and then shake a little balsamic vinegar on them. This is my basic, go-to greens recipe.

So how was it?
Not bad. The cooked garlic scape turned out to just add color and texture to the potatoes, but not much flavor. That was ok, however, because it's hard to go wrong with mashed potatoes. Butter and salt them up, and they're all kinds of yummy. The greens turned out as expected. I had to acquire a taste for cooked greens last year, as I never like them growing up and never cooked them myself until last year's CSA experience. They're not my favorite food, but I do like them now. These were the first cooked greens of the year, and they turned out pretty good. All things considered, it was a tasty meal.

CSA notes:
The spinach and garlic scapes were from the CSA. The potatoes and regular garlic were store-bought.