Creamed Spinach

If served as a side dish, this recipe is for 4. If you plan to eat it as a main meal, with plain yogurt and bread, it is for 3.

Ingredients:

454 g spinach (large beg, check if it is pre-washed, if not - wash it!)

1-2 cloves of garlic, minced

1-2 Tbsp white flour

enough oil to make paste with flour and garlic

1/2 cup milk (approximately)

salt

Put spinach in a large pot and add water to, let's say, half of the pot. Add salt on top.

Cover and cook on high. When it boils, cook 5 more minutes. Drain in fine sieve and cut horizontally, vertically and diagonally, to be sure you got it cut into small pieces. 

While spinach is cooking, take a small pot. Add oil, flour and minced garlic.

Stir to see if you can get paste. If not, add more oil. It is important because if it's not smooth, once you add milk it will curd. So at first I got something like this:

Then I added more oil (little bit more than I should) and got this:

Leave it like this (don't start cooking it) until spinach is done (drained and cut).

Once spinach is ready, put flour mixture on the stove and turn heat on. Stir flour with oil and garlic all the time. Keep stirring for about a minute or so. Add spinach and mix well. Start adding milk, little by little. If you add a lot of milk at once, flour will form small balls and your spinach will not be smooth. So, add little bit of milk, stir, add milk, stir... until you don't get desired consistency. That's why I said approximately in ingredients. 

Keep stirring and cooking until all milk is absorbed.

If you are serving it as a side dish, it is done and should be served immediately with the rest of your meal.

If you decide to eat it as a main meal which is my favorite way of eating it, add couple of Tbsp of your favorite plain yogurt, and try eating it with crusty Italian bread (to be honest, I tear bread into small pieces and mix it with spinach and yogurt, mmmmm - comfort food).

My kids love eating spinach prepared this way. Once I even overheard my son telling his friend: "Spinach rocks!"