KITCHEN ADVENTURE: I FIGHT TO THE FINISH…: This is very simple, but delectable and easily adaptable. I had never cooked spinach before; I cheated and used a bag of prewashed leaves. I strongly recommend cheating in this way. The alternative, apparently, involves filling your entire sink with water and spinach, and then eating the spinach that has been in your manky old sink. No thanks.

Anyway, I used: Various cloves of garlic, chopped; cheatingly prewashed spinach; olive oil; button (= plain old white) mushrooms, thickly sliced; Boursin cheese with black pepper. The Boursin is relatively pricey but utterly scrumptious: kinda crumbly, and intensely flavorful, rich and creamy and peppery-herby.

Basically, I sauteed the garlic and mushrooms in the olive oil until they were both golden. Then I added the spinach. I knew it would cook down, but didn’t realize it would cook down so dramatically–next time I will use lots more spinach. You have to stir this constantly to prevent the garlic from browning, but your total saute time is only about two minutes, so it’s not a big deal. When everything looked and smelled good, I dumped it in a bowl and added a big chunk of the Boursin, which melted and melded the dish together. It was rich, managing to be both homey and lustrous. I’m going to try this again with buttered spaghetti. You could probably also use it to top buttered toast, especially a thick and flavorful toasted French bread.