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Cheese and Spinach Roll
2 quarts spinach 1 tablespoon butter 1 cup grated cheese Bread crumbs Salt Cook the spinach in water for ten minutes. Drain off the water, add the butter, cook until tender, and chop. Add the grated cheese, and then bread crumbs enough to make a mixture sufficiently stiff to form into a roll; or leave more moist, and cook in a baking dish.
A plain protein-stretcher from the meat-substitute chapter, and one that lives or dies on how thoroughly you dry the spinach. Everything else is seasoning and judgment.
- Get the spinach dryAfter draining, press the leaves hard in a sieve or wring them in a towel before chopping. Spinach holds enormous amounts of water, and a wet mixture will need so many crumbs to stiffen it that the dish tastes of nothing but bread.
- Two quarts of spinachThat is a volume measure of raw leaves, loosely packed, and it will cook down to a small fraction of its bulk. Modern bagged spinach is tender; ten minutes of boiling followed by more cooking in butter will reduce it to sludge. Two to three minutes wilting is enough.
- The cheese"Grated cheese" in books of this period usually means a firm store cheese, something on the order of a sharp Cheddar. One cup grated is about 3 to 4 oz. Add it off the heat so it melts into the spinach rather than seizing into strings.
- CrumbsDry crumbs, not fresh, or the mixture will not stiffen. Start with 1/2 cup and add by spoonfuls; the roll should just hold a shape when pressed together.
- Oven, since the book gives noneFor either form, 375F. A shaped roll on a greased pan needs 25 to 30 minutes and firms as it cools; in a baking dish, allow 30 to 35 minutes and expect to serve it with a spoon.
- Season more than it saysSalt alone leaves this flat. Black pepper, a scrape of nutmeg and a little grated onion belong here, and an egg beaten into the mixture will bind the roll far better than crumbs will.
- YieldThree or four modest servings as a side dish, fewer as a main. It slices best the day it is made.
Meatless cookbooks multiplied in the United States around 1917 and 1918, when the Food Administration asked households to observe meatless days so that beef and pork could be shipped to the Allies. The response was a rush of books built on the nutritional argument that cheese, eggs, beans and nuts supplied the same "protein" as flesh. The shaping into a roll is suggestive: it may well exist so the dish can be carved and passed at table in the place a joint would have occupied, and the same reading has been offered for the period's nut loaves and bean roasts. Wartime or not, spinach with cheese and crumbs is far older than the pamphlets, being essentially the filling of a spinach tart without its pastry.