Spinach is a nutritional powerhouse. According to EatRight Ontario, "Eating just one cup of fresh spinach can give you approximately 50 per cent of your daily value of vitamin A and 11% of vitamin C." It's also a good source of folate and magnesium -- and it provides you with quite a bit of iron, too.

Boost your intake of this healthy green with some of our favourite spinach recipes:

Spinach side dish recipes

Spinach and Gorgonzola Risotto
A generous amount of tender fresh spinach melds with rich Gorgonzola cheese in this satisfying risotto.

Lentils with Oyster Mushrooms and Spinach
At Les Remparts, where classical French cuisine is interpreted with a Quebec twist, lentils complement grilled tuna.

Warm Mushroom and Spinach Salad with Fennel and Tomatoes
Although this unusual salad has a mildly licorice flavour, it is fresh and light-tasting.

Easy Crab and Spinach Frittata
A very simple lemony tomato sauce pairs beautifully with both the crab and the spinach in this Italian-style omelette.  

Main dish spinach recipes

Spinach-Baked Pickerel
Any mild to moderately full-flavoured fish, such as tilapia, can replace the pickerel in this succulent dish.

Spinach-Stuffed Sole
These healthy bundles of fish and vegetables are low in calories but high in flavour.

Chicken in Spinach Coconut Sauce
The fish sauce is necessary for the flavour of the rich coconut sauce (in the Philippines, the sauce would also include some fermented shrimp); if you don't have any, add 4 minced anchovy fillets along with the garlic. Serve this full-flavoured Filipino style "curry" with plain white rice.

Spinach Soufflé
Don't be intimidated by a soufflé; it's almost foolproof and takes little time to put together. Be sure that everybody is seated at the table when you take it out of the oven, as the dramatic height of a just-cooked soufflé diminishes quickly as it cools. The stems of young fresh bunches of spinach are tender; remove the roots only.

Spinach and Sausage Tart
A real treat with a glass of cold beer, this tart is tasty warm or at room temperature. You can use any kind of pork sausage to vary the flavour of the tart, from English-style bangers to Italian or Oktoberfest sausages.

Spinach and Fontina Pizza
You can cook fresh spinach or use thawed frozen spinach for this pizza, which is delicious with or without the ham.

Soup recipes featuring spinach

Chicken Soup with Spinach Dumplings
You can use any full-flavoured, preferably homemade, chicken soup for these vivid emerald-green dumplings. They might seem a bit difficult to form, but don't worry; even seemingly misshapen ones will swell and look fine after cooking.

Baltic Cold Spinach Soup
This cold soup, a meal in itself, served with buttered Russian-style pumpernickel was my recently deceased father's favourite dinner on summer evenings. In Latvian Yiddish, we call it botchvina, derived from the Russian botvinya.

Pasta recipes featuring spinach

Spinach and Tomato Baked Pasta
The first wonderful fresh spinach of the season stars in this simple baked pasta.

Spinach and Ricotta Manicotti
You can use ovenready dry cannelloni shells for this recipe; just stir 1/2 cup/125 mL water into tomato sauce before spreading over stuffed pasta.

Spinach and Walnut Pesto Linguine
Be sure to use fresh walnuts in this rich pasta dish for the best flavour. Buy fresh walnut halves and store them in the refrigerator or freezer.