“I was Popeye mad when I was a kid, and I’d eat spinach until the cows came home.”
— Paul O’Grady
Do you like this leafy green herb?
Raw spinach has a mildly sweet flavor, tastes refreshing in salads and its flavor becomes more acidic and robust, with some iron or metallic notes when it is cooked. This leafy green plant produces succulent, dark green, spoon-shaped leaves and offers a subtle, yet assertive vegetal flavor to today’s dip.
Spinach is an edible flowering plant of the amaranth family (Amaranthaceae), and even though they look nothing alike, spinach is a relative of beets and Swiss chard. It is best consumed fresh and loses beneficial nutrients day by day. However, you could somewhat ameliorate the nutrient loss by eating it fresh, steamed, or blanched.
I must admit we have not had spinach in quite some time so perhaps the following tidbits inspire us to include it in our menu more often.
Spinach has a large nutritional value and is chock-full of antioxidants that fight harmful oxidative stress and other benefits that include improved eyesight, bone health, muscle strength, regulated blood pressure, diabetes …etc etc etc. However, too much of a good thing isn’t always good, and if you had an older family member on warfarin/blood-thinner, they were probably instructed to stay the hell away from it. You see high amounts of vitamin K1 in spinach interfere with clotting and that is bad news.
Historically, spinach was brought to the US in 1806, and popularized in 1930 by Popeye, a comic strip character made by E.C. Segar who was a vegetarian. So while our association with this plant goes back to cartoons this green queen is a native plant of Persia, modern-day Iran, my native land. It is pronounced esfanaj in Farsi and if you sound it out you’d notice immediately that spinach and esfanaj have the same ring or auditory impression. As nature’s best vitamin, it was introduced to 7th-century China, a country that is now the largest producer of spinach in the world.
Culturally this dark leafy green superfood is utilized in numerous Persian recipes, and one, in particular, is called Borani Esfenaj برانی اسفناج, and most likely the inspiration behind the West’s spinach dip with the yogurt being replaced by a combination of sour cream and cheese as in today’s recipe.
The Taste of Montana’s spinach dip is baked with bacon bits because bacon makes everything taste better, plus all that spinach healthiness was just killin’ us. I mean we wouldn’t be the United States of Bacon if we weren’t infatuated with bacon’s salty, umami, and slightly sweet — plus the added scrumptious taste of fat (which, is rumored to be the new sixth basic taste).
If we ever break bread you’d notice that I add a few extra pinches of salt to my food, maybe more than average. Salt is a natural nutrient we’re drawn to as mammals and combines and enhances the umami of any food while at the same time complementing the sweetness.
This dip tastes warm and cheesy, looks great with vibrant green colors, and is sure to become the most popular appetizer at your parties! We enjoy it best served with crusty bread and I am sure your family and friends will love it too.
