I keep reading that I should be eating more “leafy green vegetables”, but quickly run out of ideas.
-Salads, with a variety of lettuce
-Stir-fry, with various Asian greens (bok choy, choy sum, etc)
-?
What other ways can I include leafy greens into my diet?
And what the hell do you do with spinach to make it yummy?
I do not like cooked spinach at all, but raw baby spinach makes a lovely salad. You can add it to traditional lettuce-based salads, or try this:
8 oz. baby spinach, rinsed
1 can mandarin orange slices, drained
8 oz. fresh strawberries, sliced
4 oz. walnuts, chopped (or alternately, slivered almonds)
Toss together and dress with a Raspberry Vinnaigrette (Ken’s Steak House brand has a nice one). Yummy.
I like fresh baby spinach with pan-fried spaghetti or fettucini. Make your noodles, to whatever tenderness you like them. Drain them and pour a couple tablespoons of olive oil over them. Toss to coat in the oil. Heat a frying pan on high heat until it’s hothot (not hothothot, just hothot). Put a couple more tablespoons oil in the pan and toss some minced garlic in there. As soon as the garlic is smelling good, toss the noodles in and let them brown. They’ll probably stick to the bottom of the pan, but that’s all right, just keep 'em moving. Remove from heat and put them in a bowl or the pot you boiled them in, if you’re like me. Toss in some thinly sliced, pre-cooked meat-of-choice (I use deli-sliced ham/lunch meat). Toss in a crapload of baby spinach and toss to combine. Let it sit for a bit – it should be hot enough that the spinach will wilt quite readily. Top with your favorite cheese and spices and/or herbs. Enjoy.
Spinach also rocks in calzones, especially when made with fresh, chunky tomato sauce and lots of cheese.
Apparently, spinach is made delicious with the addition of fatty cheese.
What kind of lettuce are you eating? If it’s just plain iceberg, replace it with baby spinach. In everything. If it’s romaine, bibb, and other, not as sucky, lettuces, use the spinach to supplement it in salads or vice versa and use spinach in your tacos, hamburgers, etc.
The taste and texture is so much better and it packs more nutrients too.
I like it cooked too but that’s a more acquired flavor.
Originally posted by norinew:
…drool…
Try some soul food. Eat some collard greens (don’t forget the hot sauce!). Also, slip lettuce into as many dishes as you can. Sandwiches, burgers, wraps, etc. Prepare mini-fruit salads or rice dishes on a bed of lettuce. Wrap other foods like chicken in lettuce. Put some shredded greens in the next cake you bake (just kidding!). Uh, eat lettuce by itself, if you’re into that sort of thing.
I like lettuce.
Kale is another good one. Chop it into strips and stir fry it with a little garlic, sliced onion and olive oil, then add a few tablespoons of water to the pan and cover it. Reduce the heat and steam it until it’s wilted. Then (I know this sounds weird, but it really is the key to great kale) add a few dashes of either balsamic vinegar or lemon juice. The acidic vinegar or juice magically makes the bitterness of the kale disappear. Add salt and pepper to taste.
Any, and I mean ANY leafy green can be sauteed with garlic and olive oil. When I buy the cheap bag o’ spring greens on sale near their sell-by date, I’ll get a few more days out of them by cooking them. Heat olive oil gently, add lots o’ garlic and then a whole bag o’ green stuff. Sautee until the garlic is brown, and then cover until it wilts. Extra yummy with Boursin or parmesean cheese added. A whole 5-7 ounce bag will cook down to about 2 servings.
Stinging nettles, if you’re lucky enough to have then growing in your yard, are a fantastically nutritious leafy green. Just wear gloves to harvest it! It loses its stinging properties once it’s cooked. (If you do sting yourself, grab a handful of the leaves (with gloves this time!) and mash them on a rock or in a blender. Then slap the plant mush on the sting. Nettles contains the antidote to its own sting inside the leaves.)
Any greens can be cooked and added to pasta sauces - red or cream based.
Romaine lettuce sliced and steamed mixed in with cheap ramen noodles is excellent. I like to stir-fry onion and garlic and sliced carrots, then add a couple of bricks of ramen with the spice packs, a bit of water, some frozen peas and a head of romaine sliced into strips. Cover until the lettuce wilts. You can also stir-fry some meat or tofu with this for a complete meal.
I luuuurve leafy greens; kale is one of my firm favourites; shredded finely, steamed really no more than necessary just to make it wilt, then heaped up and smothered with a rich gravy or cheese sauce… my mouth is watering just thinking about it.
I made a ‘proper’ (i.e. Carnanoli rice, real stock; added a little at a time etc…) wild mushroom risotto the other day and served it with a salad of watercress, baby spinach and rocket which again, was just ever so lightly steamed to wilt it.
And it’s fast approaching the time when I can start picking seakale and sea beet on the beach again; I’m a big fan of wild vegetables and sea beet is one of the very best.
Spinach is really nice if you throw a heap of it into a food processor with some ground nutmeg and white cheese such as Feta or maybe goat cheese, then roll the resulting mixture into little balls and use them on a pizza.
Ooo, I’ve been waiting for an excuse to post this recipe. It’s originally from one of the Moosewood cookbooks, but I haven’t cracked the book in a long time, so I don’t how loyal this version is to the original recipe. None of the measurements is critical; adjust to your taste.
Beans ‘n’ Greens
[ul]
[li]2 cloves of garlic, minced.[/li][li]2 Tbsp olive oil.[/li][li]A pound of escarole or endive, chopped. (Look for them amongst the salad greens. My grocery store even has prewashed, prechopped escarole in the bag o’ salad section.)[/li][li]1 can of beans (I usually go with a white bean: navy, great northern, or butter.)[/li][li]1 tsp. Red pepper flakes.[/li][li]Ground black pepper.[/li][li]1 Tbsp lemon juice.[/li][/ul]
Sweat the garlic in olive oil until lightly brown. Add the red pepper flakes and greens and cook until the greens are wilted. Add the beans and heat until warmed through. Toss with lemon juice. Add black pepper to taste.
Serve over a good, robust starch: whole wheat pasta or bulgur wheat are my favorites. It’s excellent with some grated parmesan or romano cheese on top.
The greens are bitter. The lemon juice cuts that a little, but part of the charm of the dish is the strong flavor of the greens combining with the blander beans. If it’s a little too bitter for you, you can increase the beans and cut back on the greens. Also adjust the heat to your taste.
Another way to sneak spinach into your diet:
Pod’s Pressure Cooker Lentil Soup
[ul]
[li]1 small onion, chopped.[/li][li]2 cloves of garlic, minced.[/li][li]2 Tbs olive oil.[/li][li]1 carrot, chopped.[/li][li]1 stalk of celery, sliced.[/li][li]1 tsp ground cumin[/li][li]1 1/2 c uncooked lentils.[/li][li]4 c broth. (Pacific Food’s mushroom broth is to. die. for.)[/li][li]1 bag of prewashed spinach.[/li][li]Salt and pepper to taste.[/li][/ul]
In the bottom of the pressure cooker, sweat the onion and garlic in the olive oil. When the onion is soft, stir in the cumin and continue to fry for a minute or so. (Yummy cumin smells should be forthcoming.) Add the carrot, celery, and sweat for
a few minutes more. Add the lentils and broth, and bring the pressure cooker up to pressure. Cook for 15 minutes. Cool down using the quick release method. Return to heat and add the spinach, stirring until the spinach is just wilted. Taste, and add salt and pepper. (How much salt you want to add will depend on how salty your broth was.)
You can probalby make this without the pressure cooker; just cook the lentils until they’re done, which should be about half an hour . . . not as fast, and definitely not as sexy. 
Get yourself a Southern cookbook, and look up “Greens.”
Spinach, collard, whatever. Cook them up, and scarf them down! I love greens.
That is the coolest! I had no idea, on either count.
How do nettles taste? I grew up with those %#&@! things all over the place, but didn’t know they were useful for anything but pain.
Oh yeah, I was also going to post a recipe I tried recently for Brussels sprouts – I got this one from that famous jailbird, Martha Stewart.
Steam the brussels sprouts until they turn bright green.
Meanwhile, saute the bacon until crispy and the fat has rendered. Add the apples, and saute until golden brown. Add thyme and pepper to taste. Fold in the Brussels sprouts, season with salt to taste. Serve immediately.
It’s a very tasty Germanic kind of dish. I really enjoyed it.
Another nettles tip: The part that stings is the hairs on the stem and a line of hairs along the main vein on the bottom of the leaf. If you feel like living dangerously, you can harvest the leaves without wearing gloves by carefully folding them in half with the bottom surface to the inside and pulling them off the stem. (The tricky part is not touching the stem or making it brush against the back of your hand as you pull the leaves.)
Or you can fold the leaves with the upper surface to the inside, holding them carefully by the non-stinging part of the leaves with the stinging hairs exposed and chase your little sister around the yard while screaming, “I’m gonna nettle you! I’m gonna nettle you!” I have to warn you, though, that this might result in your being Sent to Your Room.
If (like me) you generally think brussels sprouts are nasty, try this: shred them fine and saute them very quickly in oil in a hot pan. You can throw some walnuts into the pan and toast them with the sprout shreds for some texture. I think they’re much better that way than steamed. I once saw a recipe that suggested adding ginger to the pan as well, but I’ve never tried that.
You can mix cooked chopped greens of any kind into your mashed potatoes. Add ham or chopped scallions too, if you like. I like to do this with the more assertive greens, like kale or mustard greens.
Greens go well in soups. Just chop them and throw them in to any veggie or chicken or bean soup. All the good nutrients from the greens go into the broth, so this is a very nutritious way to cook them.
If someone (say, me) doesn’t like strawberries, is there another berry you would recommend?
Kale cooked in chicken broth is a good one, especially if you cook it just enough to remove any crunch, but not turn it into slimy green mush.
Raw spinach salads are terrific as well.
Take a look at Italian and Indian cookbooks- they all have a variety of spinach recipes.
Kale is the best. My favorite kale recipe:
Cook up some brown rice.
Chop up some tofu into bite-sized chunks, and marinate in a mixture of water, tamari, grated ginger, crushed garlic, cayenne, and red chile flakes. (You can speed up the marinating by popping the bowl into the microwave for 7 or so minutes). You could probably do something similar with pork or chicken, but I don’t know the specifics.
Drain the tofu well, reserving the marinade. Heat some oil in a pot or wok til it’s very hot, then saute the tofu till it starts to get browned.
Meanwhile, whisk a very large spoonful of natural peanut butter into the marinade. Taste it and adjust the seasonings.
Before the tofu starts to burn, pour the marinade over the tofu and scrape all the good stuff off the bottom of the pot. Turn heat down to medium. Cook it until the sauce is fairly thick, stirring frequently.
Meanwhile, chop one or two bunches of kale into bite-sized chunks. Add to the pot, stir up a bit, and cover. After about five minutes, check to see if the kale is cooked; stir in some more. Take the lid off and cook until the sauce is thick again (it will have thinned from the water in the kale).
Serve the stuff over the rice. The sweet crunch in the kale is a fantastic counternote to the warm spicy mushiness of the sauce and tofu. I can eat the hell out of this stuff.
Daniel
A favorite semi-Indian dish (from I believe, one of Madhur Jaffrey’s books) involves Spinach.
I can’t reconstruct exact amounts, but start with satueeing onion (more than you might think), add water and uncooked lentils. Simmer until lentils are cooked (you should arrange the amount of water so it’s mostly absorbed by now).
Turn off the heat, add chopped ginger, lemon juice, and lots of fresh spinach leaves (it cooks down a lot, so plan on lots and lots of spinach).
Stir it until the spinach wilts down, and serve with rice, poori or whatever Indian things you like.
At this point, I just wing it for amounts, but if you’re desperate, I could try and reconstruct them.
I recently started cooking with broccoli rabe, and discovered that I adore it. Here’s a quickie pasta dish that both of us decided ranked among the best:
Saute 1/2 pound of cubed pancetta in a big skillet until it’s crispy. Remove the pancetta and reserve. In the fat in the pan, saute a couple of chopped cloves of garlic until soft and add a shake or two of chile flakes. Add 1/4 cup of white wine and bring to a boil. Add 1/2 pound of broccoli rabe and 1 cup of chicken broth, cover and steam it for 5 minutes. Thicken it, if you wish, with a tiny bit of flour slurry. Serve it over spaghetti with lots of parmesan cheese and cracked black pepper.
They’re a mild bitter, like young dandelion leaves. The texture’s a bit like collards. Great for digestion, as all bitter tasting things are.
Dandelion greens (the young ones in early spring) are good steamed, sauteed or in salads, too. Eat your weeds! Violet (Johny Jump-up) leaves and flowers are yummy, too, but now I’m probably getting a little “weird” for non-herbalists! 
I love dried cranberries with spinach, and they’d go very well with the mandarin oranges in that recipe. I like to throw seedless red grapes on salads. Also sliced apples are good (toss them in a bowl with cold water and a disolved Vitamin C tablet if you’re making the salad for presentation - the Vit C stops them from getting brown.)
How the heck did you pull exactly what I was going to post out of my head like that? It’s a DAMN good trick - you gotta show it to me sometime