Success Cooking Leafy Greens (Spinach Zucchini Gratin Recipe)
The Food and Drug Administration now says it’s completely safe to eat your vegetables like usual, and here at Shorebird and Goat we strongly believe that fresh produce is one of the most important parts of our diet. But over the last few weeks we got a little bit… um… skittish about leafy greens. So we experimented with a couple of recipes that involved cooking them. Even now that our Scientist Friends have told us salads are safe, we will occasionally dust these two off.
- First we made a variation of this lettuce soup. We used fairly old lettuce for this and it still came out great. It wouldn’t have been good in a salad anymore, but this was a great way to use it. Instead of a head of lettuce we used three romaine lettuce hearts. I strongly recommend having this with croutons in it. The croutons soak up the soup and add a little bit of heft. It’s a very light, but surprisingly flavorful.
- Then we made this great spinach zucchini gratin, recipe below.
Ingredients
- One zucchini, finely diced
- One bag spinach (again this was an older spinach that I don’t think would have been great any more in a salad)
- One onion, diced
- One clove garlic, minced
- One cup breadcrumbs
- One egg
- Parmesan cheese
- Olive oil
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350
- Boil a pot of water
- Lightly salt the diced zucchini to help bring out the water
- Coarsely chop spinach and once water is at a rolling boil, boil for only about 2 minutes.
- Strain spinach in colander and immediately run cold water over spinach (aka blanch the spinach)
- Dry spinach as much as you can with paper towels and leave it in the colander to drip
- You can use the empty boiling water pot now to saute the onions and garlic for about 5 minutes (no need to use an extra pot. The spinach needs a while to cool and drain)
- Lightly grease a casserole dish with olive oil and mix together the onions, diced zucchini, dried spinach, bread crumbs and egg
- Sprinkle a layer of parmesan and bake about 40 minutes