Our post “Dark Green Leafy Vegetables Can Prevent Cancer” got replies from 93 blogs that asked for permission to reprint it. Due to your interest in this topic, I start series of articles/posts about several of these green superfoods and how you can use them in your healthy cooking.

In any season there are so many options when it comes to greens. Especially now, in summer, we have spinach, kale, cauliflowers, broccoli, Brussels sprouts that are all members of the cabbage family, and like the cabbage itself are proven to be the most nutritious of all vegetables.

 Let’s start with spinach, a healthy vegetable. Wheather eaten raw or cooked, it  is full of vitamins and minerals. Spinach with its green and lively leaves is

  • an excellent source of vitamin C if eaten raw;
  • full of vitamins A and B;
  • provides calcium, potassium, and iron.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                   

As an amazingly versatile vegetable, spinach is popular worldwide with nearly every cuisine around the globe. The Italians make hundreds of dishes using spinach. If you see in any restaurant’s menu the words a la florentine, it means the dish contains spinach. The Italians created a huge range of recipes mixing spinach with with their favorite  ricotta or Parmesan cheese. The French invented delicious quiche with spinach.

Very often the Russians use baby spinach fresh and  include it in summer green salads with green onions, cucumbers, tomatoes and bell peppers. Spinach also makes the basic ingredient in the Russian famous and very nutritious green borscht. The British traditionaly make  a spinach souffle which includes eggs and Cheddar cheese. The Americans use spinach as a garnish or make Spinach in Filo with Ricotta Cheese and other cheeses or just sauteed it with garlic.

As you know, spinach is delicious on its own. Whole dark green leaves, chopped or pureed spinach can be mixed with other ingredients to deliver great taste and nutrition. It has been centuries old tradition in Greece and  the Middle Eastern countries to mix spinach with some dairy products like feta or helim cheese to make so-called boreks or other spinach pies.

Spinach is a very old vegetable. It was first cultivated in Persia several thousands years ago. It came to Europe via the Arab world. The Arabs from the Middle East took it to Greece. The Moors introduced it to Spain, and from Spain it apppeared in England in the fourteenth century. Spinach quickly became popular there because it is easy to grow and cook. It is mentioned in the first known English cookbook where it is referred to as spynoches, which sounds so similar with the Spanish word for spinach, espinacas.

Read my next post how you can make delicious meals with nutritious spinach and other dark green leafy vegetables.

Submitted by Svetlana Konnikova.

Source: Photo of Spinach from www.phoenixgardens.net; Five-a-Day Fruit & Vegetable Cookbook by Kate Whiteman, Maggie Mathew, Cristine Ingram, Hermes House, London, 2008, p.350