ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Wednesday, April 2, 1997 TAG: 9704020008
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 8 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: CHARLE STEBBINS SPECIAL TO THE ROANOKE TIMES
Dear Food Editor:
Let me state one thing straight out.
There's only one way to eat spinach. Raw in salad mixed with other raw veggies.
I hold that to be a scientific truth about food preparation; one that food preparers violate at my table at their own peril.
Well, maybe not quite that serious.
But it is true that I have run the full range of emotions over spinach. From hate to tolerance.
Nowadays I eat it only raw in salads. Never cooked.
My nightmares over spinach go back to my childhood when my mother set before me heaps of boiled spinach. With it came the command: "Eat your spinach. You want to be healthy and strong like Popeye, don't you?"
My required answer was, "Yes, ma'am," but the answer in my head, never spoken, was that Popeye ate the stuff straight from a can. And he bit the can open, which proved he was healthy and strong already. Despite spinach. Either that or he was crazy.
My mother was a grand lady in many ways, but on the matter of spinach, I have doubts. Especially with
boiled spinach. I know now, with a bit more maturity and experience, that in my childhood I could have eaten it raw if my mother had offered it that way and I was nervy enough to try it, which I probably wouldn't have been. But serving raw vegetables was not in the Victorian upbringing of my mother.
As soon as I grew up enough to escape mother's embraces, I stopped eating spinach and did not touch it for many, many years. Like the caption on a New Yorker cartoon when a man was presented with a dish of what was described as broccoli and said, "I say it's spinach and the hell with it."
After being away from spinach for years and years, I one day went into a small-town restaurant and found spinach on the menu. On a lark - or, more likely, a flash of insanity - I decided to try it with the expectation that either my taste or tolerance had matured.
I was wrong on both counts and all hope was dashed. As soon as the plate was set before me, I recognized the spinach as being in the same tradition as my mother's. It was just as bad as ever.
Boiled spinach gets sort of slimy and when pressed with a fork a dreadful ooze curls up through the tines.
And the taste of this latter-day spinach was just as I remembered from my childhood. It was in the same category as a medicine that was served up to me in a spoon; a deathly streaky mixture of green and gray. On the order of poison.
Once in the mouth, this slippery glob sent my taste buds into fast reject and rigor mortis set into my swallowing mechanism. Getting it down brought forth a sort of gurgling gasp which, strangely, my mother interpreted as a cry of delight and brought forth more spinach.
When I outlined the perils of spinach to a colleague recently she agreed that, yes, spinach gets limp and slimy when cooked too long. The secret is quick cooking in only a scant of water.
She promised to produce a recipe, but I have doubts that anything can improve boiled spinach. Are there other ways to prepare it? Baked, fried, microwaved? I've never tried those. Burning should be a vast improvement.
I pride myself on trying new things. So if a recipe comes forward, I will work it through and try not to hold my nose and clamp my lips.
I suppose I owe it to my mother. Even after all these years, I have a feeling I should honor her and eat the spinach and get healthy and strong. Like Popeye.
LENGTH: Medium: 69 lines ILLUSTRATION: GRAPHIC: color.by CNB