Navy beans with Spinach a la Española

It all started with a bunch of spinach from the farmers’ market, a red pepper, a recipe from Mark Bittman, and this picture on flickr. I wanted to cook the spinach and browsing Bittman’s book, I came across his recipe for spinach with currants & nuts. I remember seeing spinach cooked this way when I lived in Spain so he may be right in describing it a “Mediterranean classic”. The picture is of Botifarra amb mongetes, a very typical Catalan dish that consists of roasted sausages served with white beans. Mixing up those elements with parts of Bittman’s recipe, I came up with this:

Ingredients:

1 can white navy beans (or any other bean), rinsed

2-3 cups spinach, washed and coarsely cut

2 garlic cloves, slices

3 tbsp sunflower seeds, lightly toasted (pine nuts would also be nice)

3 tbsp currants

1 red pepper

1/4 cup white wine (or water or stock)

olive oil

salt & pepper to taste

Directions

1. Preheat the broiler on high for a few minutes while you wash the pepper and spinach. Once the oven is hot, place the whole pepper on a cookie sheet underneath the broiler and roast it until it is charred on all sides (about 10 mins). Remove the pepper from the oven and wrap in tin foil. [This is based on the method described here]. Once the pepper is cool enough to handle, unwrap it and peel off the skin. Chop it up.

2. Soak the currants in hot water for about 10 mins.

3. Meanwhile pre-heat a skillet on medium heat and add 2 tbsp olive oil. Add the garlic and cook until golden (be careful not to burn the garlic!)

4. Add the spinach, season with a bit of salt & pepper. Once it starts to wilt, add the white wine.

5. Once the white wine has evaporated somewhar and the spinach is wilted, add the currants (drained), sunflower seeds, & beans and mix well. Lower the heat.

6. Mix in the roasted red peppers and serve.

We had it warm and it was very tasty. The next day I added some balsamic vinegar to the leftovers and ate it as a bean salad. It was even better!

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