Peppered Spinach

I'm not a fan of spinach. Unless it's with a lot of cream cheese, I cannot eat it with a genuine happy heart.

But I married a Popeye. And now I often find myself staring at bouquets of spinach and wondering to myself, "what should I do with you?" I usually just blanch them for my husband and he eats it with some flavored soy sauce; but you can never make me eat it that way. Haha!

So one night, I cooked peppered pumpkins and thought I should try doing that to spinach. Then I did.

​When he got home from work the following night, he said, 'the spinach in my bento this lunch was very delicious! what did you put in it?'. And concluding that the pepper was the amazing twist in that spinach, he requested another peppered spinach for that evening and the following day's bento. And I ate a happy small serving of it too, hooray!

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Ingredients

• spinach, 4 bunches (cut into 4-inch length)

• shiitake mushroom, 8 strips (rehydrated)

• ajinomoto

• mushroom powder

• black pepper

• vegetable oil

​Procedure

1. On a pan lightly greased with vegetable oil, stir fry shiitake mushroom until desired doneness. Remove from pan and set aside.

2. On the same pan, add a little more oil and toss in the spinach stems first. Season with black pepper and ajinomoto. Keep mixing.

3. After a minute, toss in the spinach leaves and season with mushroom powder, black pepper and a little more ajinomoto.

4. Serve on plate and top with stir-fried mushroom!

Tips and tricks Before, I usually cooked a lot of this so that I can transform it into spaghetti sauce, ramen and pizza topping. All were very delicious!!