Japanese Restaurant Spinach with Sweet and Salty Peanut Dressing

In order to make enough of this, I think I'd need some kind of a dump-truck delivery of spinach.

At our favorite Japanese restaurant, Osaka--the place where the kids and I always want to go for our birthdays (links to me writing about it before, only oddly unflatteringly. . .)--there's a crazy-addictive spinach dish that's listed on the menu as "Osmitashi." You might see it on your favorite Japanese restaurant's menu as "oshitashi," which seems to be the preferred English spelling, and if you order it, it will be delicious: chilled balls of steamed spinach in a light dressing of soy and sesame, or maybe ponzu, which is soy and citrus. It's always good. But at Osaka, it's different: the dressing is thick and creamy, rich and salty and a little bit sweet. It says "sesame dressing" on the menu, but, in the way of many "sesame dressings," such as the cold sesame noodles from Empire Szechuan on 100^th and Broadway, your mouth says "peanut butter." It's topped with papery flakes of dried, smoked fish (bonito) and the four of us used to get one order, to share, and now we get two, to share, and it's not enough. "I'm getting my own," I say. "For just me. I want you guys to understand that and order accordingly." Only then Michael and the kids decide to share one, and what do you know, they need to get all involved with mine when they run out. I think "step off," but sigh, instead, in my maternal spinachless martyrdom.

 Thus we came (when? just now) to a recent evening of toying, unflushly, with the idea of going out to eat. It was really the osmitashi itself I was craving--not even the expensive rest of the meal--and so, thriftily, I bought a huge bag of spinach instead, and we set about to copycatting. And we got pretty close--close enough to make something addictive, and so we bought another huge back of spinach the very next day and nailed it. The first version had toasted sesame seeds and sesame oil in it, and it was a little wrong. Also miso, which was also wrong (maybe I was confusing it with our other addiction, the miso salad dressing at Fresh Side in Amherst, which CANNOT BE DUPLICATED no matter how hard we try). In fact, it turned out to be incredibly simple: peanut butter, rice vinegar, soy, and sweetener. And the bonito flakes, which I got at our local Asian market, but which you could get more expensively from Whole Foods. 

We've made it a half dozen times now, and it disappears in about a minute. It's crazy good. I want to say that it's irresistible, except that Ben and Birdy's friends Harry and Ava managed somehow to resist it. We were shocked, but it's true--they didn't like it. I mean, they didn't wipe their tongues off on a dish towel (*cough* Ben and hard-boiled egg *cough*), but they ate about 4 nanobites each. So if you really are not a fan of cooked spinach, this may or may not convert you. But the dressing is great for cold noodles too, so you might want to make it anyway.

Speaking of--what? Cold noodles? No. Nothing, I guess. But we're leaving today for our annual camping trip on the Cape! See you there? I'll be the one in line at Moby Dick's trying to decide between scallops and clams.

xo

Osaka-style Osmitashi

Serves 4

Active time: 10 minutes

Total time: 45 minutes

1 pound clean spinach (in a pinch, a 10-ounce bag will be okay, but not enough)

2 tablespoons peanut butter (mine is not natural-style: it's the organic kind from Whole Foods that has sugar and salt and oil in it, like eco-Jif)

2 tablespoons seasoned rice vinegar (or plain rice vinegar, with a little more soy and sweetener to compensate)

1 tablespoon soy sauce or tamari

2 teaspoons agave nectar (or, I'm assuming, honey or sugar)

2 tablespoons warm water

Bonito flakes (or toasted sesame seeds) for topping

Cram all the spinach into a large lidded pot with a steamer and a half an inch of water in the bottom of it, and bring it to a boil over high heat. Steam the spinach until it is thoroughly wilted and collapsed--a minute or two. Leave it to cool while you make the dressing.

Combine the peanut butter, rice vinegar, soy sauce, and sweetener in a food processor and whizz until it's blended and creamy, then drizzle in the water with the motor running. Now look at it and taste it: it should be thin enough to pour (add more water if it's not) and it should be a perfect balance of sweet and salty, with just enough vinegar to keep it from being cloying. Try it, ideally, on a piece of spinach so you'll see what it's going to taste like, and adjust the seasoning as needed. Scrape the dressing into a jar you can pour it from easily.

Ideally, with all your dithering, the spinach will be cool enough to handle now. Gather it up and wring it out over the sink. Really squeeze it--you're going to end up with something around the size of a baseball, which is kind of demoralizing but totally fine! Squeeze and squeeze it. Now grab the ball of spinach in one hand and a pair of clean scissors in the other, and cut the spinach ball over a bowl so that you are making smallish pieces of spinach. (Why couldn't you do this with a knife on a cutting board like a normal person? Good question! I'm sure you could!). You're not looking for it to be chopped fine--but you want to be able to grab at it with chopsticks and have some come away without a lot of trouble.

Now grab small handfuls of the spinach and squeeze them loosely into balls. You will get around 8 balls. Arrange the balls in a dish and then (ideally, if you can stand to) cover and refrigerate for a half an hour until they're nice and cold. Now drizzle the dressing around them, sprinkle the bonito flakes on top, and serve.

Oh, that's got to be much too much spinach!

I'm kidding, of course. It all but disappears.

When I'm wringing it out, I think about saving--and then drinking--the spinach juice, but then I think of the "Hard Core" song from School of Rock. I think that might be too hard core even for me.

Snip, snip, snip. A knife would just make it taste so. . . knifey.

This takes just a few seconds--in case this picture gives you that hours-and-hours feeling of making dumplings or ravioli or something. Nope. Easy peasy.

Voy-lah.

The dressing is quick and easy. And here's my weekly plug for the Agave Council! Kidding.

You could pour the dressing actually onto the spinach balls, given that you're not trying precisely to recreate the way Osaka does it.

Fish food! Bonito flakes. I know they don't seem promising, but they're so smoky and delicious.

Birdy is ready. . . set, go!

Funny that I mentioned "fish food," since the expression "feeding frenzy" comes to mind here--the way goldfish swarm at the top of the tank.

 I feel like the Star-Wars light-saber sound-effects should be playing. We eat this so quickly and thoroughly.

Waaah.