A New Twist on Steamed Spinach

This is another recipe that I got from the cookbook The Food of Vietnam from the library.  It only has 5 ingredients, but it has such a powerful taste!  The original recipe was called Pan-Fried Water Spinach with Yellow Bean Sauce, but I skipped the frying part and made the dish without the oil.  I think my least favourite thing about this dish is that even though I spent almost an hour in the kitchen tearing off the stems from the spinach, it yeilded only 2 normal sized servings.  Oh well... I did use baby spinach in place of the water spinach, because that is what we had on hand.  The cookbook said that the best substitute would be regular spinach, but you use what you have, right?

Actually, the story behind the spinach is kind of funny.  When M and I last went to the grocery store, we got this HUGE bag of baby spinach becuase it was so much cheaper than where we normally get salad greens.  I was laughing so hard when we got it.  The spinach looked really good too, and just needed to be stemmed and run through the salad spinner, and it was ready to go!

I think the unique ingredient in this spinach recipe is the yellow bean sauce.  I found our jar next to all of the stir fry sauces, but no telling where you could buy one in other stores.  The bottle that we bought was a really dumb design, though.  The sauce is really thick, and the bottle has such a small opening, I had to use a knife to get the stuff out.  Studpid manufacturers.  But the flavour was incredible- it was so strong, I have to say that this is not a dish, as M put it, that goes unnoticed.  It is quite salty, but the dominent flavour is very hard to describe.  It's almost bitter, but not quite.  Anyway, I highly recommend trying it out.

Sauted Spinach with Yellow Bean Sauce

Serves 2
Adapted from The Food of Vietnam

2 servings spinach, with water from washing still on leaves (when it is steamed, so TONS more than you would think)
2 cloves garlic, minced
2 green onions, chopped
2 tbsp yellow bean sauce
Salt and pepper, to taste
Heat a large kettle coated with nonstick spray. Sauté garlic and green onions in a bit of water for about 30 seconds. Add the spinach and cook until it is almost all wilted, about 4 minutes. Add the yellow bean sauce and salt and pepper, and cook until the spinach is entirely wilted.