Friday night I found myself with a bag of spinach that needed to be eaten, a couple of russet potatoes left over from my first foray into gnocchi making (intentionally undocumented), an open container of soy sour cream, green onions, and some marinating breast of tofu. This rare confluence of ingredients prompted our very own vegan steak house dinner. I found a recipe for creamed spinach on Recipezaar, convinced Paul that it would be delicious, and it was. Here's the recipe:
Vegan Steakhouse Creamed Spinach
3 Tbsp. margarine
2 Tbsp. flour
2 Tbsp. chopped onion
1 bay leaf
1 whole clove
1 c. soy milk
1 bag spinach
salt and pepper
1. Melt 2 Tbsp. marge over medium heat.
2. Add flour and stir until golden, about 5 minutes.
3. Sir in onion, bay leaf, and clove.
4. Gradually whisk in soy milk.
5. Continue whisking until mixture boils and thickens, about 10 minutes.
6. Reduce heat to low and simmer 5 minutes longer, stirring frequently. Mixture should be quite thick.
7. Remove bay leaf and clove.
8. Dunk spinach in a pot of hot water and swish it around until it's wilted. Remove from hot water and stop the cooking by immersing the spinach in a bowl of ice water.
9. Squeeze out excess water from the spinach.
10. Finely chop the spinach in a food processor. (I ignored the instructions here and did this by hand. Next time I'l follow the directions. In the finished product I wished that my spinach had been finer.)
11. Add spinach to warm sauce and stir to combine and heat through.
12. Stir in last Tbsp. of marge.
13. Season to taste with salt and pepper.
14. Serve at once. (It gets kind of goopy when you let it sit around.)
