THE FOREVER DISHES.

What are forever dishes? They’re the ones you have for life. Top of the list, this dill and spinach rice with feta.

The very first time you cook them, you know. It could be a recipe for Thai pork or chicken larb, or spaghetti al pomodoro, or a chocolate cake that gets everything right, but you just know it’s a keeper.

Like meeting someone and getting on so well, so immediately, and so easily, that you feel you have known them before. Maybe even slept with them before. You’re just picking up where you left off.

What’s on your forever list? Mine has roast chicken (of course), and Singapore noodles, and simple things like quiche Lorraine, cheesecake, really good lamb kofta and cantuccini biscuits.

And this simple dish of rice cooked with spinach and dill – so much dill – to be served strewn with feta and drenched in lemon juice.

I’ve loved spanakorizo every time I’ve had it, shovelled out of the warming trays in a Melbourne Greek restaurant or sitting with feet in the sand on a Greek island. I’ve also cooked it at home, a lot. It’s not the sort of recipe you do once, and never again.

 “Spanakorizo is a dish I make dozens of times each year”, says Kon Karapanagiotidis, whose cookbook Philoxenia, A Seat At My Table, was done with his mother Sia. “It’s quick, simple, cheap and so healthy”.

The lovely Tessa Kiros has a recipe for Once-A-Week Spanakorizo in her new book (Now & Then). “I honestly never get tired of this” she says. Her description of it as “a little rice for a mountain of spinach” will give you the motivation to keep adding more and more greens.

In fact, I just checked, and I don’t own a Greek cook book that doesn’t have a recipe for spanakorizo, unless it’s a stupid one trying to be modern.

Pam Talimanidis (A la Grecque), serves it topped with a poached egg and serves it with feta by the slice.

Tess Mallos (Greek Cookbook), says it is very good served cold.

Rosemary Barron (Flavours of Greece) adds cumin, and recommends the age-old tea towel trick to ensure the fluffiest rice – once the rice is cooked, remove the lid, lay a clean tea towel across the pan and replace the lid. Leave in a warm spot to rest.

Vilma Liacouras Chantiles (The Food of Greece) cooks her spanakorizo with tomatoes, adds mint and nutmeg, and garnishes with sliced hard-boiled eggs.

Angeline Kapsaskis (The Commonsense Cookery Book) washes the spinach in hot water, to get the wilting started.

Peter Conistis adds garlic and cumin, and serves with grilled calamari. Both he and George Calombaris use risotto rice, either arborio or Carnaroli.

Carol Willson, John Goode and Liz Kaydos (Greek-Australian Cookbook) make the very good point that spanakorizo is “served regularly in a country where meat is often very expensive and cannot be served for every main meal.”

To that end, by all means serve this dish with little more than feta on top, but consider it also as your best friend at a barbecue to make the grilled meats go further. Grilled fish, too. Prawns (see below), no-brainers. I have half a left-over charcoal chicken in the fridge right now, which I will shred through the rice and gently reheat (it reheats like a dream) tonight, and serve with garlicky toum and yoghurt.

Most traditional recipes will start with onion, sometimes leeks or spring onions. They use spinach, sometimes silver beet leaves as well. They always cook the greens with the rice, often par-cooking the spinach beforehand for up to 30 minutes. Sorry, can’t do that. I wilt the spinach, add the herbs and fold that through towards the end of the rice cooking time, which still gives it that signature slippery butteriness.

I’ve made this with proper leafy spinach (what we call English spinach in Australia), and with a couple of bags of baby spinach, and the proper spinach is better. I’ve used red, white and brown onion (red colours the rice) and I swap to leeks in winter. I’ve used basmati, jasmine, arborio and SunRice medium-grain, and they all work.

Everything works. Even if you burn the onion a bit, it works. That’s why it’s a keeper.

DILL AND SPINACH RICE WITH FETA

• 1 big bunch English spinach, washed and roughly chopped

• 4 spring onion greens, roughly chopped

• 1 bunch dill, de-stalked and roughly chopped

• 1 cup mint leaves, roughly chopped

• 1 onion, diced

• 3 tbsp extra virgin olive oil

• 200 g medium-grain rice, rinsed

• 300 ml veggie stock or water

• Sea salt to taste

• Juice and zest of 1 lemon

• 100 g feta, crumbled

• Lemons to serve

Heat 1 tbsp olive oil and cook the diced onion for 4 minutes until softened, without browning.

Add the rice and cook over medium heat for 2 minutes until well-coated, stirring.

Add stock or water and sea salt, and bring to the boil.  Cover tightly and cook for 15 minutes.

Heat 1 tbsp olive oil in a fry pan and cook the spinach, and most of the dill, mint and spring onion greens until just wilted.

Fold the greens into the rice, adding the cooking juices if it seems dry. Cover and leave to sit for a few minutes.

To serve, add lemon zest and juice, give it a good toss, and tip out onto large warm serving platter.

Strew with crumbled feta, reserved herbs and remaining tbsp of olive oil, and serve with lemon wedges for squeezing.

Serves 4

Tip: Trim off the spinach and dill stalks, chop them up with the whites of the spring onions and add them all to the rice; keeping the greens until later. #zerowaste.

Thanks for dropping by! And as always, thanks for your comments and suggestions. Special thanks to Terry, to whom I gave a copy of the bilingual Greek-Australian Cookbook (illustrated by Michael Fitzjames!) in 1984 with the inscription ‘in memory of the last Greek meal I ate alone’.

I would like to acknowledge the traditional owners of the lands and waters upon which I work, live, cook and play; the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation, and pay my respects to Elders past and present, and to the continuing strength and resilience of First Nations people, communities and cultures.