They've been having fresh spinach at the Market In The Loop lately,
and whenever they do and it looks good I buy some, and a big ole
shallot too. Here's my recipe:

Clean the spinach. Yeah, this is real spinach, not that prewashed
prebagged baby spinach stuff. It's big ole wrinkly spinach leaves
still attached to their plant. Here's how I wash it. I run a clean
sink full of cold water, then tear off and into 0-2 to 4 pieces the
spinach leaves off the plant and put it all in the cold water. Then I
slosh the spinach leaf pieces in the cold water for a while, gather
them all up against one side of the sink, drain the water, replug the
sink and repeat 2,3 or 4 times until the water's very clear and all
the sand and grit is off the spinach leaves. Put cleaned leaves in a
colander and set aside.

Chop shallot up into tiny pieces. Place in large skillet with some
olive oil and a small pat of butter and brown shallots. Add 1/2 tsp
brown sugar while browning! Yeah it's cheating but it's so good! Grind
a little black pepper on it too.

When the shallots are browned and begin to carmelize, add the cleaned
spinach (this is why you need a large skillet!) and stir and turn up
the heat to cook the spinach. Stir from the bottom up to coat all the
spinach leaves with the shallots and oil as quickly as possible.
Continue to stir as spinach reduces down, grind little black pepper on
it and add a dash or two of good soy sauce and cook and stir until
spinach is done and reduced significantly in volume.

Plate, let cool a little and eat! YUM! Rich in iron too! (I've gotta
eat some citrus now to utilize that dietary iron! :-) )

John Kuthe...