In season: It’s time for fresh spinach to shine

Spinach is the ultimate cool-weather crop. It's one of the few garden vegetables that will germinate when the soil temperature is only 50 degrees. And right now big bunches of first-of-the-season spinach are showing up in our stores.

What a relief. Sometimes in the winter, it comes down to kale versus broccoli if we want to get our nutritious green vegetables. But fresh, new spinach seems like a beautiful bounty of spring goodness - which it is. Spinach is an excellent source of vitamin K, vitamin A, manganese, folate, magnesium, iron, copper, vitamin B2, vitamin B6, vitamin E, calcium, potassium, vitamin C, omega-3 essential fatty acid (six times more than omega-6), phosphorus, vitamin B1, zinc, protein, choline, and dietary fiber. That's packing a lot of healthy nutrients into a crinkly leaf.

Just as the microbial life in good garden soil likes plenty of organic matter to decompose and deliver grow-power into our garden beds, so do the denizens of our digestive system, our gut bacteria. Same processes, and in some cases, even the same bacteria, doing the same job - tearing organic matter (like spinach) apart and feeding its constituent nutrients to our garden crops through their roots or to us through our intestinal structures.

That's one reason why leafy green vegetables are so good for us.

They are food for our intestinal flora, and when our intestinal flora is diverse and healthy, so are we.

And the way the flora gains good health is by being fed a wide variety of fruits, vegetables, starches and moderate portions of high quality protein from meat, milk, eggs, and cheese.

Spinach should be a chief component of a spring variety of leafy greens in salads, along with some bitters like dandelion greens and Belgian endive, and sweet early spring lettuce mixtures for sweetness.

You may have heard that raw spinach contains oxalic acid that can interfere with the absorption of the vegetable's calcium.

But as an occasional salad ingredient it won't harm you for several reasons, primarily because we can get calcium from a wide range of other foods, especially milk-based products like cheese and yogurt. And secondly, spinach is packed with other nutritional goodies that you don't want to avoid.

Cooking cuts the oxalic acid in spinach by about half, so consider some of the great cooked spinach recipes that have been developed across the Middle East and the Mediterranean cultures.

Spinach is native to Iran, where it still grows wild. In ancient times, Iranians overran the Middle East right up to Greece several times, carrying their recipes with them. An army does travel on its stomach, and so spinach came to Greece, where the Greeks, in their infinite creativity, gave us spanakopita - a blend of spring flavors so delicious that we're still making it long after Xerxes and Darius the Great went back to Persia.

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Nowadays we all know how healthy the Mediterranean diet is for us. I'd pair this classic Greek dish with an edgy, brilliant white wine made from the Assyrtiko grape on the Aegean isle of Santorini, but if you want to stay at home, you couldn't do better than the blend of Roussanne, Grenache Blanc, and Picpoul called Esprit de Tablas Blanc from Tablas Creek winery near Paso Robles.

Spanakopita

Makes 15 servings

3/4 cup extra virgin olive oil

6 spring onions, sliced into 1/4-inch rounds

1 medium red onion, chopped fine

1 leek, cleaned, white and tender part sliced into 1/4-inch rounds

2 bunches fresh spinach leaves, washed well and de-stemmed

3/4 cup fresh dill, minced

8 ounces feta cheese, crumbled

4 ounces ricotta

3 eggs, beaten

1 pound phyllo pastry sheets

- Salt and fresh ground black pepper to taste

Heat four tablespoons of the olive oil in a large saucepan over medium heat and sauté the onions and leek until translucent, about 4 minutes.

Add the spinach leaves to the saucepan and sauté until the leaves have wilted and the liquid cooked off, about 8 minutes.

Remove the saucepan from the heat and allow it to cool until you can handle it, then cut the spinach finely using two knives and transfer the mixture to a large bowl.

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Lightly oil a 12-inch baking pan or 10-by-15 Pyrex baking pan.

Add the dill, feta, and ricotta to the spinach mixture. Salt and pepper to taste, but be aware that the feta will add a lot of salt on its own.

Pour the eggs over the mixture and stir well to incorporate.

Open up the phyllo pastry package and immediately cover the sheets with a damp cloth. Use half the phyllo sheets to make the bottom layer, one at a time, generously brushing each sheet in the baking pan with olive oil, and covering the remaining phyllo with the damp cloth each time you remove one.

Allow excess phyllo pastry to drape over the edges of the pan.

Put the spinach mixture on the bottom layer, smoothing it gently, then begin topping the filling with individual sheets of phyllo, brushing each generously with olive oil.

Fold the excess phyllo hanging over the edge of the pan back along the inside wall of the pan. Using a sharp knife, score the top layers of phyllo into serving-size diamonds about 4 inches on a side, being careful not to cut down into the bottom layer of phyllo.

Set the pie on a rack in the middle of the oven and bake for about 45 minutes, until golden brown.

For the last 15-20 minutes, you could set the pan on the oven floor to enhance crisping the top layer. Serve warm or at room temperature, never hot. Freeze unused portions.

Jeff Cox is a Kenwood-based food and garden writer. Email him at jeffcox@sonic.net