I was dead tired yesterday. Luckily we still had some leftovers for dinner. So all I needed to do was whip up some sort of vegetable side to go with it. I had a big bag of minced spinach in the freezer and I'd just restocked on cream, so that made this an easy choice.

It wasn't a phenomenal dish, but it wasn't bad either. And it did the job of putting some green on our plates. And I cut the cream with a bit of milk, so I didn't even feel too guilty about eating it!

The original recipe was written for fresh baby spinach, but I didn't really want to commit half a kilo of baby spinach to it. As far as I'm concerned, this is what frozen spinach was made for: being used in large quantities on short notice.

Creamed Spinach with Lemon

Slightly adapted from Vegetable of the Day by Kate McMillan

Ingredients

• 1 lemon
• 1/2 c. heavy (35%) cream or half-and-half (10% MF)
• 450g frozen chopped spinach
• 1 tsp. sugar
• salt and pepper, to taste

Directions

1. Use a vegetable peeler to cut a 5cm long strip of lemon zest off of the lemon and add it to the cream.
2. Bring the cream to a simmer over medium-low heat.
3. Simmer, uncovered, until reduced by half.
4. Meanwhile, heat the spinach over medium-low heat until thawed.
5. Sprinkle in the sugar and season to taste with salt and pepper.
6. Continue cooking the spinach until any excess liquid has evaporated.
7. Grate the lemon zest from half of the remaining lemon and add it to the spinach. (Reserve the remaining lemon for another use.)
8. Once the cream has thickened, add the spinach to it and stir to mix.
9. Cook until heated through (2-3 minutes).