Spinach and soldiers

Spinazie met soldaatjes

2 kilograms fresh spinach
2 eggs
3 slices white bread
40 grams butter or margarine
salt, pepper, nutmeg

Boil the eggs for about 10 minutes. Thoroughly wash and rinse the spinach and let it drain. Cut the crusts off the bread and then cut 2 slices in four strips each. Bring the spinach to a boil, let it shrink and boil again for 5 minutes. Put 15 grams of butter into a frying pan and fry the eight bread strips - soldiers - till browned. Drain the spinach through a strainer, and collect one cup of the liquid. Chop the vegetables. Put the remaining slice of bread in the pan, add some of the liquid, salt, pepper and nutmeg and mash it when softened. Add the rest of the butter and the spinach and mix it well. Slice the egg. Put the spinach on a pre-heated dish, put the soldiers on their ends in the spinach and the sliced eggs in between the soldaatjes.

Spinach (spinazie) is a word that in almost every Western language is very similar: Épinards (French); Spinat (German); shpinat (Yiddish); spenat (Swedish) or spinaci (Italian). It derives from the medieval Latin word spinachia, which originated - as did the vegetable - in the Arab world where it was known with such names as sabanakh and esfenaj.