Hello, friends. I had one heck of a nice Saturday, and I hope you did, too. My day included pajamas until noon; the New York Times Magazine; and an inaugural round of Pandemic, the newest German-style board game in the growing collection that belongs to my German-style-board-game-obsessed husband, who likes to comment on the “game dynamics” while we play, and say things like, “I imagine this game has good replayability,” and “Yes, that’s an actual word!” and, my favorite, “Ooooh, nice bits!” (referring to all of the little tokens and figures that come with the game). There was also a nap on the sofa; a slice of spinach cake for lunch; and a taste test of a new recipe for mini chocolate hazelnut cakes with sea salt that, just as I suspected, are even better after a spell in the freezer.
If you’re anything like me, I’m guessing that all you heard was “chocolate,” “hazelnut,” and “sea salt.” Those three little words, especially when they occur in the same sentence, have a way of wiping out all memory of whatever meaningless drivel may have come before them. A word like “spinach,” I imagine, is particularly susceptible to this kind of erasure. It doesn’t stand a chance. Dropping a bomb like mini chocolate hazelnut cakes with sea salt (whoops, I did it again!) and then blathering on about spinach might, in some countries, fall under the category of cruel and unusual punishment. But the thing is, I made a spinach cake this week that I would really like to tell you about, and since you have to eat your greens before dessert anyway, I hope you won’t mind. Stick with me on the spinach and then, I promise, you can have dessert.
This spinach cake comes from David Tanis’s book, A Platter of Figs and Other Recipes. At first, I wasn’t sure how I felt about the words “spinach” and “cake” getting so cozy there on the page. Spinach pie, yes, but spinach cake? That seemed a little reckless. When I hear the word “cake,” I think flour and sugar and crust and crumb, but the thing is, it’s not that kind of cake. That’s what you need to remember. Tanis writes that his cake is “a cross between a custard and a frittata,” but I would go further than that. It’s far airier and more delicate than any frittata I’ve ever had and, while the milk and egg that pools at the bottom does indeed bake into a lovely pale-green custard, the top of the cake is so light, it’s almost mousse-like. When Eli tried it, his first response was, “It’s good. But it tastes like spinach.” Swap that “but” for an “and,” and we were on the same page. I know what he means: It would be easy to jazz up this recipe with, say, a few dashes of marjoram, or some extra cheese. It would probably be delicious. But sometimes the very best food is food that just plain old tastes like itself.
That may very well be the running theme of this cookbook: food that tastes like itself. Take Tanis's apple tart, for example. It’s the plainest darn apple tart I’ve ever seen. There’s no messing with cinnamon or vanilla or heavy cream. It’s just a good, flaky pastry dough, topped with thinly-sliced apples, and a sugar glaze. It’s perfect. Or his rhubarb kumquat compote, which boasts only the two fruits (well, one fruit, and one fruit-ish vegetable) that I’ve already mentioned, and a cup of sugar. I haven’t yet tried it, but it’s on my list for this spring. A lot of food out there these days looks as if it has been prepped for the runway, lipstick, false lashes, five-inch heels and all. David Tanis’s recipes, on the other hand, are bare-faced beauties. It’s my kind of food. That’s what I was thinking about this afternoon as I ate my slice of spinach cake.
There. Spinach blathering over. That wasn’t so bad, was it? Now, eat up, and I’ll be back with dessert in a day or two.
p.s. The Jewish holiday of Passover begins on Monday night. Some of you may have noticed that this spinach cake recipe just so happens to be kosher for Passover. That is, it’s bread and leaven-free. Here are some other recipes from the archives that can be made kosher for Passover:
Savory
Broccoli Salad
Herbed Goat Cheese Spread
Muhammara (minus the breadcrumbs)
Shakshuka (without the beans and rice; instead, try serving over quinoa, a Passover-friendly “grain,” according to most)
Simplest Tomato Soup
Sweet
Cherry Almond Chocolate Chunkies
Chocolate-Covered Coconut Macaroons
Salted Chocolate Almond Toffee
Spinach Cake
Adapted from David Tanis’s A Platter of Figs and Other Recipes
Spinach and leeks both tend to harbor a little extra dirt, so be sure to wash them thoroughly. You don’t want any grit in your cake. David suggests serving this cake at room temperature. I was certain that I would prefer it warm, but he was right. Room temperature is better. Today, I enjoyed it chilled, right out of the refrigerator. Everything about this cake – the flavor, the texture, the consistency – improves by the second day. In the future, I will make it the day before I plan to serve it.
About 2 pounds of spinach, stemmed, washed, and more or less dried
2 medium leeks
2 T. butter
Freshly ground salt and black pepper
Several dashes – about ¼ tsp., I’d guess – of nutmeg (David’s recipe calls for grating it fresh, but the ground, jarred stuff will work in a pinch.)
2 c. whole milk
6 large eggs
A generous pinch of cayenne
About 2 T. of freshly grated Parmesan
Over a medium flame, melt the butter in a deep, heavy-bottomed pot (I used my enameled cast-iron pot). Add the leeks, a few grinds of salt and pepper, and sauté, stirring occasionally, until they are tender but still green, about five minutes. Sprinkle the nutmeg over top, add a layer of spinach, and season with a few grinds of salt. Next, add another layer of spinach, a few more grinds of salt, and repeat until all of the spinach is in the pot. (If your pot isn’t large enough, you’ll have to steam the spinach in two batches.) Turn up the heat slightly, cover the pot, and let the spinach steam over the leeks. Lift the lid to stir once or twice so that you get an even steam. You want the spinach to be just barely wilted, so the steaming should take no longer than two minutes. Turn the leeks and steamed spinach out onto a cutting board and let it cool. Save any cooking juices that are left in the pot.
Preheat the oven to 400 degrees, and butter a deep, 10-inch pie dish. When the spinach-leek mixture is cool, taste it and adjust the seasoning, as necessary. Remember that you are about to blend it with a lot of unseasoned eggs and milk, so if the spinach and leeks taste a little over-seasoned, that’s actually okay.
In a blender, puree the vegetables with the milk and eggs in two batches. Add a few final grinds of salt and pepper, and a pinch of cayenne. Add any remaining cooking juices from the pot to one of the batches before you puree.
The batter will be thin and soupy. Pour it into the buttered pie dish, and grate about two tablespoons of Parmesan over the top. Bake uncovered for 45 minutes, or until a knife inserted into the center comes out clean and the top is lightly browned. The cake will puff up and dome slightly in the oven and then collapse back onto itself as it cools. Mine cracked a little bit around one of the edges, but the cake in the cookbook photograph cracked even more, so I’m assuming that it’s supposed to be that way.
Serve at room temperature, or chilled.
Yield: 8-10 servings
Note: My pie dish was not quite deep enough to contain all of the batter, so I poured the rest of it into a ramekin and made one small spinach cake. It worked beautifully, and made for a very nice presentation. If you’re making individual ramekin cakes, bake for only about 25 minutes.
