Think On It

Sformato: the careless cook’s spinach

December 3rd, 2007

This exuberantly ugly thing is a spinach sformato, which means deformed and it surely is. It would have taken me about a minute to make a double cuff of baking paper and tie with a string around the top of the dish and then it would have been a soufflé. It would have been beautiful and delicious, but only beautiful for a minute. I figured that was how long it would take me to get the cuff off and by the time I photographed it, it would be deflating. In the end, this was a bit deflating anyway.

It was delicious. I ate it.

Hardly anybody makes soufflés anymore. They think it’s hard to do. It really isn’t, and if you bother with making the cuff, it will be beautiful. If you don’t want to bother with the cuff, my advice it to fill a lower baking dish 2/3 full to give it room to rise, and call it a sformato. Handy word. The thing is, because there was no restraint and because my oven has a hot spot, this rose up and spilled out like magma on the opposite side and now I have to clean the oven. Careless cook, indeed.

Elaborate vegetable it is, however, and good to eat and healthy. With eggs. milk and spinach in it, it can be a vegetarian meal or a puffily, steaming vegetable dish. You can not, however, drag it outside to photograph it nor get more than a few shots before it starts to deflate, so serve it quickly to some eager eaters.

Sformato or soufflé of spinach

Preheat the oven to 150°C or 300°F

about 6 ounces of steamed spinach, or about a cup, wrung dry with your hands
1 tablespoon of butter
2 tablespoons of flour
a pinch of cayenne or peperoncino in polvere
1 cup milk
3/4 teaspoons salt
2 eggs, separated
a generous amount of nutmeg, to taste
about 1 ounce of freshly and finely grated hard cheese, such as Parmigiano Reggiano
1 teaspoon butter for the cooking vessel

Chop the cooked and wrung out spinach finely with a knife.

Grate the cheese. Generously butter the inside of a baking dish, then use part of the cheese to coat it, as if you were flouring a cake pan. Shake any excess back into the container in which you’ve grated the cheese.

Use a fork to whip the egg yolks in a small bowl.

In a small, heavy pan, melt 1 tablespoon of butter and then stir in the 2 tablespoons of flour to form a thick paste. Remove the pan from the heat and very slowly stir in the milk, a little at a time, using a silicon spatula to flatten any lumpy bits. When the mixture reaches the consistency of cream, you may just stir in all the remaining milk. Add the salt and cayenne. Return the pan to the heat and bring to a boil, stirring, then reduce the heat to minimal and continue to cook a couple of minutes. It will thicken and become a white sauce.

Stir about 1/4 of the hot sauce into the egg yolks, then scrape that back into the pan. Stir in the chopped spinach very thoroughly. Grate some nutmeg into it, quite generously. Taste and correct. It should be a bit pungent, because it will be diluted with the egg whites shortly.

Using an egg beater or a mixer, and with the egg whites in a large, rigorously clean, non-plastic bowl, whip the egg whites until they are stiff but still glossy. It took about a minute for me.

One-third at a time, using a silicon spatula, fold the spinach mixture into the egg whites. Scrape all of the mixture into the prepared baking dish, then scatter the remaining grated cheese on top. Pop into the oven and leave it alone for 40 minutes. You literally do have a minute or so to serve it puffy. It’s best served with two forks.

The butter and cheese form a delicate crust that releases from the dish. All the prep dishes are easy to clean. It’s really not much trouble at all.

Dedicated to Kid Magnet, who loves spinach like I do.

Entry Filed under: secondo, cheese, vegetarian, contorno