Spinach

“Vegetables in England are served in all the simplicity of nature, like hay to horses, only a little boiled instead of dried.” This was the comment of some unknown disenchanted visitor to these isles.

For vegetables are our weak spot - all the world acknowledges that. And it is not the elaborate dishes that trip us up. It is in the simplest forms that we fail.

Take spinach, for example. An exotic from Persia, it was brought by the Moors to Spain, by the Spaniards to the Low Countries, by Flemish refugees to England. And after that great pilgrimage, we plunge it into cold water, boil it, and then force it on our children.