I made creamed spinach for the first time yesterday. It’s not an especially Lenten dish, what with the cream and butter and cheese. And though Lent is also not a time that is traditionally devoted to feasting this is supposed to be a space devoted to feasting. It’s right there in the tagline: Space to play, rest, create, feast. Those are the ways I tend to occupy myself on a snow day and the stuff I want more of in the other days. But so far I haven’t explicitly feasted here on the blog. Enter the creamed spinach.
I do not own a copy of Mastering the Art of French Cooking, though I do own a copy Julie & Julia and have watched it at least 40 times. I am not exaggerating. I can’t think of a better movie to have been Nora Ephron’s last, her masterpiece. At the heart of it are two interwoven stories of loving partnership in marriage, passionate calling, and self-discovery. And there’s Meryl Streep.
I love the love stories and I love the faltering, tentative ways that Julie and Julia both try to figure out who they are, following the breadcrumb trails of their callings in life. Neither of them knows where it’s all going and neither is entirely confident that this is it. But one crumb at a time they each keep going, creating, loving food, feasting.
Recently I saw a Smitten Kitchen recipe claiming to be a compilation of the four different creamed spinach recipes in Mastering the Art of French Cooking. I don’t own a copy but I have cooked from it and my ears perk up whenever I hear about a recipe I might attempt. I picture Meryl-as-Julia and I hear the soundtrack and I think I could make that! Still, I was not entirely convinced that I am a creamed spinach person. It’s not a dish we had in my house growing up and I find that many cooked spinach dishes are spinachy in all the wrong ways: strong green taste, stringy strands that haven’t been chopped well, kind of a big glompy mess. But I do love spinach and I wanted to find some more go-to ways to prepare it, especially in winter when another cold spinach salad just won’t cut it.
And even though it is surprising/disappointing every single time you watch an entire pot of fresh spinach become only 3 cups of cooked spinach, it is also amazing what happens to spinach when it’s combined with just enough butter, cream, cheese, salt, and pepper. Oh, and a few breadcrumbs on the top. As my husband said when he tasted it, “This is the dish to start kids on so that they will never say I hate spinach.” Fresh and creamy, but not swimming in butter-cheese-cream. Just enough to hold it together and make your mouth happy. The bonus was getting to use my gratin dishes, which always makes me feel a little French and sophisticated.
I find it sad that so many people don’t know how to cook anymore and that holidays like Thanksgiving are “special” mainly because so much of the meal is homemade for a change. Though this feast came from Julia Child, it wasn’t complicated and it doesn’t have to be. It’s acceptable to make a wonderful dish like this alongside a simple egg or even a frozen pizza. It doesn’t have to take all day and you can make it without the special dishes.
The point is remembering to follow the breadcrumbs to the place where your taste buds stop you in your tracks and make you pay attention. Where you know you are on to something . Where you savor and maybe close your eyes for a second to take in the sensation. Where the taste of simple things like spinach, cream, butter, and cheese confirm not only that you do indeed like spinach but that the rest of life is pretty good, too.