Making the most of Malabar Spinach

People looking through the My Life, My Planet community garden as about the soft and silky, fleshy plant that threatens to take over large sections of the garden including a perfectly fruitful paw paw. It is Basella Alba, aka Indian Spinach, Ceylon Spinach, or Malabar Spinach. A subtropical plant, it is very high in Vitamins A, B, and C, iron, calcium and fibre and is also renowned as a source of anti-oxidants. It is wonderful to grow in Brisbane because it loves heat and humidity and is quite pest resistant, as a result it can run wild.

Despite its fabulous nutrition profile, it is not popular among European cooks: as an alternative for spinach it is sticky, gooey or mucilaginous. Where it really comes into its own is in Asian cooking, as an ingredient in spinach pancakes, daal, or spinach dishes like palak paneer. Read on for the full details of preparing the plant to produce the fabulous spinach dish pictured at the top of the story.

Since the plant grows so vigorously, the easiest way to collect the leaves is to simply prune the vine back from the areas of the garden where it is taking over. This way you end up with a huge pile of plant material that you can then separate by pulling off the individual leaves as shown here. (I also grow it in pots in my courtyard, where it is less rampant and, there, I pick off the individual leaves as I need them.)

I then wash the individual leaves in cold water in the sink, picking off any flowers from the spinach plants, stray plant matter that has got caught up in the vine, and any caterpillars, spiders and other pests sheltering in the lush growth. I just pick up and turn the mass of leaves over, pulling out anything that I don't want to eat and then draining it, while I continue working through it, to allow the water to run off.

In one saucepan I fry up onions, mushrooms and spices as a base of flavouring for the spinach stew. I generally include Hing (asafoetida, a natural flavouring from the Ferula plant) which gives a strong umami based to the stew and brown spices (nutmeg, cinnamon, pepper, cloves). When the onions are transparent and the saucepan still hot, I add a good dose of vinegar (usually brown, apple cider, kambucha, or balsamic) which causes the base to soften into a "jel". While that is cooking, I also fry up the potatoes, paneer, and/or tofu with their own spice mix as a complement to the warm umami "brown" flavours of the spinach stew.

I then add a splash of water to the onion jel, and stir in the spinach, filling up the saucepan and popping a lid on so the spinach is steamed and collapses. Every couple of minutes I turn over the mass of spinach, bringing up the totally collapse leaves and moving the fresher leaves closer to the heat. After five to ten minutes, the saucepan full of spinach will have collapsed to a fraction of the size and the saucepan can be topped up with fresh leaves. Once all the spinach is collapsed and stirred into the onion mix I run it through a blender, food processor, or pulp it with a stick blender. I turn down the heat and allow the finely blended spinach stew to form an even consistency, blending and adding water as necessary to achieve an edible mix.

Once I am happy that the stew is stable, of suitable consistency and seasoned to taste, I stir in the potatoes, mushrooms, tofu or paneer, and turn off the heat. The stew is ready to eat and can be popped into the fridge or freezer for later use. I often use it as an accompaniment to yellow dhaal, meat stews and rice. It is quite rich and has a strong presence that means some people find it a bit much on its own.