Creamed Baby Spinach

The holidays are here!  I love this time of year.  Thanksgiving and Christmas always inspire me to try new recipes and I love shopping for gifts for my family.  Thanksgiving is the time to stop and be thankful for what you have been given.  I am thankful for wonderful family and friends to share my dishes with and also that I am healthy and able enough to get in the kitchen and do all of this madness!

We had Thanksgiving lunch at my parents' house and my contribution to the meal was Creamed Baby Spinach from the book.  The ingredients were easy to pack and travel with.

The first step of the recipe is making a Mornay sauce which is a bechamel flavored with cheese.  I used a French Swiss cheese that I found at the Fresh Market.  To make the sauce you cook onion in butter and then add flour and then cream and milk.  The sauce is seasoned with cloves, nutmeg, peppercorns, and bay leaf.  After the sauce simmers for about thirty minutes, you whisk in the cheese. I then wilted the spinach in butter with shallots...

 After stirring the Mornay sauce into the wilted spinach...

 

 I topped the dish with more of the grated cheese used in the sauce. 

After baking the dish in the oven until it was bubbly and the cheese melted, it was ready to serve.

The dish was delicious but I did totally negate any health benefits from spinach by covering it with that much butter, cream, and cheese.  I think I could make a spinach lover out of a hater with this one.