I'm Popeye The Sailor Man

I would say there is an awful lot of propaganda today, but there was some of that when I was younger, too.  Take for instance, Popeye the Sailor Man.  We'd watch cartoons and it blew my mind how Popeye's success was tied to... spinach!  When he needed strength or to help Olive Oil, he'd pull out a can of spinach, squeeze it, and the spinach would go into his pipe.  Soon, with bulging forearms, he was able to handle anything.  Spinach gave him strength and who wouldn't want to be like Popeye?  He didn't have to work out or be particularly healthy.  He just had to eat spinach at critical times to get the results he needed.

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As a child I remember this can in our pantry...

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Also Del Monte had cans of spinach.  Mom had some of this in the pantry.  Of course spinach is healthy, but canned spinach is not the way you want to eat it.  You want to eat it fresh out of the garden. We grow an heirloom French variety, Monstrueux de Viroflay.  The leaves are big and bright green.  You just know its healthy for you.

For supper the other night, Tricia asked me to pick a pound of spinach.  The spinach leaves were big and thick with almost a leather-like feel to them.  The wife was going to make Cream of Spinach soup.  It's a simple dish, with fresh ingredients: Spinach, onion, garlic, broth, and cream.  You can see old Rosie in the background.  I fed her some spinach so she wouldn't feel left out.

The spinach wasn't picked for 10 minutes before it was processed and cooking in a dutch oven on the stovetop.  What a brilliant green color it is!

We've go lots more spinach to harvest.  Tricia pulled out a recipe for Creamed Spinach.  Perhaps we'll have this soon!  Ruth's Chris Steakhouse has this as a side dish.  It is rich, cheesy, and delicious.  I also found a recipe for spinach and cream cheese crepes.  We've never cooked that and the recipe looks really good.  If spinach does make you stronger, we'll be beneficiaries of that strength because we have lots of spinach to eat.  None of it will be coming from a can!

Making Cream of Spinach Soup

I have a row of fresh spinach growing in the garden.  It is beautiful and so far, with a cool snap, the bug pressure has been minimal.  Cool temps and a drizzle gave us a hankering to make a soup - Fresh Cream of Spinach soup, to be specific.  We used a recipe from a cook book we have by Jude Theriot called La Cuisine Cajun.  Let's take a walk out to the garden...

The recipe calls for a pound of fresh spinach.  I'm hoping I can snip off enough spinach leaves to make a pound, but I won't know unless I weigh them, right?  I'll bring the kitchen scale out to the garden.  I carefully snipped the biggest spinach leaves off, being careful not to damage the plant as the spinach will re-grow leaves and continue producing for us through the winter.  There we go - I harvested a pound of spinach:

Even though a rain had washed them, I brought them inside and filled the sink with water and let them soak in the sink.  For some reason, spinach has a propensity to hold little dirt particles.  I don't like eating grit, so I want to be sure I cleaned them up good.  I soaked and drained and then repeated, pulling out little pieces of grass.  Finally the job was done.

Here are the other ingredients:
3 cups chicken stock (we had just made fresh chicken stock from some chicken backbones and necks)
2 tbsp butter
1/2 cup of chopped onion
1 1/2 tbsp minced celery
2 tbsp of AP flour
3 large egg yolks, slightly beaten (the hens made this contribution to our soup)
3/4 cup of heavy cream (the cows got to make a contribution, too!)
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp Tabasco sauce
1/4 tsp of freshly ground black pepper
1/4 tsp white pepper

In a black skillet we melted butter and sauteed the onion and celery.  After five minutes, we added the flour and cooked for 2 more minutes.

At the same time this was going on, on a separate burner, we put the spinach in a pot and covered with water.  We brought the water to a boil.  Once boiling, we reduced heat to low and simmered for 15 minutes.  Then we added the chicken stock and simmered for 5 minutes.  Once 5 minutes passed, we removed from heat and allowed to cool.

We added the light roux (onions, celery and AP flour/butter) to the soup base and stirred it in.

We then used an immersion blender to blend all well at high speed.  This chops everything up real fine and you can start to see the soup come together.

We then put the soup back on the burner and bring to a boil.  It will thicken.  We beat the egg yolks and heavy cream together, adding some of the hot soup to the egg/cream mixture.  Reduce the soup to low and add the egg/cream mixture.

Add the salt, Tabasco sauce, black pepper and white pepper and stir all together.  Then get a bowl and get ready to eat!

Delicious!!  The neat thing about this soup is that you can substitute other vegetables to make the kind of soup you want.  For example: asparagus, carrots, squash, zucchini, broccoli...  This soup will serve us well over the winter.  It will warm you up, for sure!