Italian Baked Spinach and Pea Frittata (Frittata al Forno di Spinaci e Piselli) A baked frittata is a different object from a pan frittata, and the spinach version is where the difference matters most. In a tray, in the oven, the eggs set from every side at once and nothing is flipped, so a wet filling has nowhere to escape to. Spinach is the wettest filling an Italian kitchen puts into eggs: a bag of leaves cooks down to a handful, and almost everything that disappears is wa

Spinaci alla Romana (Italian Roman Style Spinach) Spinaci alla Romana is spinach cooked with garlic, raisins and pine nuts, and it is one of the few Roman contorni that carries a sweet note on purpose. Everything about it is decided in the four minutes of cooking and the twenty that come before. Get the leaves properly dry and the sweetness stays in small bright bursts against the iron of the greens. Get them wet and the pan floods, and what reaches the plate is a grey puddle

Spinaci alla Crema (Italian Creamed Spinach) Spinaci alla crema is the contorno that Italian home cooks think of as easy and professional cooks think of as a water problem. Raw spinach is about ninety one percent water. Two and a half pounds of leaves collapse into roughly a cupful of cooked greens, and every drop that is not removed before the cream goes in will come back out on the plate ten minutes later, sitting in a pale green pool around an otherwise good dish. The meth