Warm Spinach Salad

Today was pastel class day, so when I was showing Jim where the refrigerator was so he could make his own lunch, and where all the ingredients were for a sandwich, I mentioned that tonight was vegetarian; I got a huge frown. So I gave in and took some cod out of the freezer. I should not have as this salad was a really complete meal and just delicious. By the way, he forgot to eat lunch.  I will mention at the outset that they call for a squash called Delicata squash. I used the already cut and peeled squash from Wegman’s. To me it looks like a Hubbard Squash which I like a lot and the Delicata may be a CA only squash, could not find it.  

Squash, 1 ½ #

Olive Oil, 4 T

Salt and Pepper

Sherry or Red wine vinegar, 3T

Baby spinach, 8 oz.

Ricotta Salata or feta cheese, 4 oz, crumbled. I used the Ricotta Salata as I am not real fond of Feta, but I will eat it. The Ricotta Salata, imported, from Wegman’s was wonderful.

Toasted sliced almonds, ½ c.

So if you look over the ingredients you can see there is plenty of protein in this dish. Tonight, Jim announced that salad takes too much chewing.  Healthy eating is so hard for him.  I forgot to mention that this recipe is also from Eat Well. 

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. I cut the larger chunks of squash smaller. Lined a 12 x 17 pan with non stick foil and put a T of olive oil, salt and pepper on them and put them in the oven for 30 minutes. The squash in the recipe took 20 minutes, but mine was not done in 20 minutes. Meanwhile, I toasted the almonds and combined them in a large salad bowl with the spinach, red wine vinegar, cheese and salt and pepper. When the squash was done, I added that to the bowl.

This was the scary part, as I have had oil catch on fire on the stove. Put 3 T of oil in a small skillet and warm. I did but it may not have been warm enough as I had no splatter from the oil hitting the cold spinach. Toss again and serve. I think it might be safer to put the oil in a deep glass measuring cup and put it in the microwave for 1 ½ minutes. But I had the cod on speed cook; that is setting on my microwave. Jim loved the dressing.

Jim served a 2005 Zinfandel, Farleigh of Livermore, CA, who used fruit (50-50) from Sonoma and SLO.