Gleanings
Excerpted from Flying Tomato Farms
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Earlier this month, I pulled the last of the spinach to make way for a summer crop. While other area growers were just getting their first harvest, my early-sown crop had been clipped twice, and was starting to bolt to seed.
The last of the spinach isn’t good enough to sell. The first cutting fetches a premium (which in these parts is about $3.50/bag). The second cutting, when many of the leaves have had their tops severed in the first cutting, goes down to $3/bag.
The third cutting, ragged and homely as it is, is all mine. These nine super-stuffed gallon bags, washed three times and spun in my five-gallon spinner, were destined for spanikopita, and the freezer.
The day before embarking on this year’s batch, I’d made a couple of gallons of raw goat milk (purchased from a local farmer) into the soft, but slightly crumbly cheese that works best for the project.
In addition to the spinach, herbs were needed to give the flaky pastry triangles a bit more complexity of flavor. I chose dill and cilantro from the farm, a couple kinds of mint from the home gardens, and a few shoots of broccoli raab as well.
The herb selection varies from year-to-year—though not too much because whatever is ready when the spinach is coming out is what gets used in the recipe. Well, and whatever seems good to me at the time I’m ready to make it!
Once all the herbs are washed, I start to process of chopping spinach and sautéeing pan after pan of it with a sprinkling of herbs and a few onions I dehydrate earlier in the spring—before the green onions bloom and I have to cut them all down.
After last year, when I attempted to chop all the spinach at once (causing my hand to seize up around the handle of the knife in a most painful way), I now switch between chopping and cooking it down to add to the pot of filling on the table.
Once the spinach is all cooked, I whiz the cheese, a little salt, and a few eggs in the food processor and mix it into the greens.
And then I take a break because the next part is the marathon!
