Spinach or chard with potatoes, garlic and olive oil Istrian way Recipe
Spinach or chard with garlic and extra virgin olive oil is a peasant dish, hearty, rustic and nutritious. It is extremely easy to make, inexpensive and with its humble appearance it most certainly offers a lot more than meets the eye.
It is a perfect side dish to any grilled or fried fish, but equally delicious with pork, lamb or chicken and accompanied with fried egg makes a great vegetarian meal option.
Back home, on the Slovenian coast, this dish is a most frequent companion to grilled fish and grilled or deep fried squid, a bit like fish and chips and mushy peas in the United Kingdom.
Spinach or chard with garlic and olive oil is very popular in Dalmatia and on Dalmatian island (Croatia) where it is believed it originated from. It is on this islands, where tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers and other summer vegetables are abundant during the summer, that chard would be the only green leaf vegetable that could grow during the scorching summer heat therefore it has been a very treasured vegetable containing a lot of vitamins and minerals and a lot of water make it very hydrating and easy to digest.
This dish travelled north along Dalmatian coastline to Istria where it has become as popular as in Dalmatia and is found on the menus in most restaurants and cooked in almost every household.
This is another dish that is part of my childhood and adulthood, it never came into the fashion, it never went out of the fashion, it has simply always been there...
I am sharing here my family recipe.
Ingredients
Serves 4-6 as part of meal
1kg spinach, baby spinach or chard
400-450g potatoes, peeled and cubed
4 cloves of garlic, peeled
5 Tbs extra virgin olive oil (the best you can afford)
sea salt
Method
Wash thoroughly spinach or chard, (no need to do so if bought already washed version) cut off the stalks and chop or just tear the leafs with your hands into smaller pieces. If you are not using the stalks for this recipe you can use them for vegetable minestrone, put them on a compost or simply discard.
If using chard remove tough centre stalks.
Place cubed potatoes in a pan, add water, a pinch of salt and boil until just tender, for about 10 minutes. Drain and set aside.
Fill a large pot with ¼ of hot water, add spinach or chard and cook only for few minutes until wilted.
Drain very well in a colander. When the spinach is in a colander, press down with a back of a wooden spoon to remove a bit of excess water. You can use a big colander to drain both potatoes and chard.
Rinse quickly and dry the pot where you cooked the spinach, add extra virgin olive oil and garlic.
Fry the garlic on a gentle heat until it becomes softer and golden in colour. The oil will be nicely infused with the garlic.
Remove and discard the garlic.
Add spinach and potatoes to the pan with garlic infused oil and sautéed on a medium heat for about 15 minutes, stirring occasionally or until you get a nice velvety consistency and you loose most of the water from the spinach.
Adjust the seasoning with sea salt and serve hot or at the room temperature.
Just a thought
This vegetable side dish has a delicate garlicky flavour. If you are a big fan of garlic and keen on stronger garlicky taste, add crushed garlic to extra virgin olive oil without removing it instead of adding the whole garlic and removing it after the oil has been infused like suggested in the recipe.
You can also prepare this dish by cooking the potatoes and the spinach or chard in one big pot together rather then separately. Use one big pot, boil cubed potatoes first until just tender then add spinach or chard and cook until wilted, drain both in big colander.