Carrot, Spinach, and Rice Stew

This spinach with rice and carrots is so nutritious, and it's such an easy and simple weekday side dish. 

The recipe for this spinach with rice and carrots illustrates how three large bunches of fresh spinach wilts down during the cooking process into a side dish for four.

I didn't discover spinach until I was an adult (unless you count watching Popeye cartoons and the sad little bowls of stewed spinach in the school cafeteria). My parents were not that adventurous with vegetables, nor did they make a big deal about us eating our vegetables (at least in my memory, my sisters and cousins may have an alternative memory).

Spinach finally came back into fashion during the 70s when wilted spinach salads with hot bacon dressing became all the rage. The salad, along with discovering Stouffer's Spinach Soufflé, convinced me that spinach might not be so bad.

Later I discovered how to make an easy Fish Florentine that I found in a community cookbook, which I added to my limited dinner repertoire. Spinach was okay!

This recipe begins with one and a half pounds of fresh spinach... not the bagged kind, but the kind that comes in bunches and needs to be washed in several changes of water.

Pictured above is the amount of spinach I used that eventually produced the four servings in this dish. It's pretty amazing how fresh spinach wilts when you cook it. You pile it into the pan, thinking that your pan is way too small, but it doesn't take long for the spinach to reduce down.

If you'd like to get more spinach in your diet, I've got quite a few delicious spinach dishes here, including:

1. Spinach and olive focaccia
2. Pepperoni pizza spinach squares
3. Spinach gratin
4. Bacon and spinach quiche
5. Muffins Florentine
6. Assyrian Spinach Pies

I've also got a spinach and sausage pie coming soon.

I know, I know. You're asking "what the heck is this spinach dish doing here?" It's all because my friend Camilla of Culinary Adventures with Camilla is cooking her way through the book, Mark Bittman's Kitchen Matrix: More than 700 Simple Recipes and Techniques to Mix and Match for Endless Possibilities, and she has invited her friends to cook along with her. Keep an eye on her blog every Tuesday for a new post about the book, which is a compilation of all of the recipes that he posted in his Matrix column in the New York Times. After the recipe, you might just find more recipes for spinach!

The vegetable chapter in the book include 18 different vegetables 12 ways. That's 216 variations on vegetables. And that's just one of 10 chapters.

Yield: 4 servings

Carrot, Spinach, and Rice Stew

ingredients:

• 1/2 pound carrots, peeled and sliced into one inch pieces
• 5 1/2 cups water
• 1/2 cup long grain white rice
• 1 1/2 pounds raw spinach, the kind that comes in bunches (not bagged), triple washed
• 3 cloves garlic, minced
• 2 tablespoons butter

instructions:

1. Bring the carrots and the water to a boil. Add the rice and the spinach. Simmer, stirring until the carrots and rice are tender, about 20 to 30 minutes. 
2. Stir in the garlic and butter, and serve. 

http://www.karenskitchenstories.com/2018/01/carrot-spinach-and-rice-stew.html

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