Warm Spinach And Grilled Apple Salad

...with goat cheese and hazelnuts.

This is a good means for eating spinach and under ripe apples in nasty weather when you are afraid that if you succumb to the call of comfort food one more time you will come down with scurvy.

1 apple, kinda tart and green, of a variety that holds its shape well when cooked. I'm sorry I have no idea what this was. It sat in the kitchen for over a month and was nearly as hard and green today as it was when I got it at the apple festival back in October.

a sliver of butter

2 handfuls of spinach
some hazelnuts, toasted, no salt
a sprinkle of herbed goat cheese, this was from TJ's
splash of sherry vinegar, balsamic vinegar, and good olive oil

Core the apple, slice it about 1/4" thick, and put them in a single layer in a frying pan. You want the pan to be just above medium-hot so the apples get nice and brown but you don't scorch the butter. Don't poke them around, they'll get all mushy. When the apples are brown on one side, turn them over and do the other side, then shove them to the side of the pan and put in one handful of spinach. Stir it around a couple times, then stir in the apples, and as soon as the spinach is starting to look wilted, dump it onto a plate. Toss it with another handful of spinach and fling in the nuts and cheese. Shake a few drops of vinegar and oil over it and eat it before the fried bits get clammy or the fresh bits go limp.

I have lots of reasons to like this salad. I used up that damned apple. It is not cold, which is very appealing when it gets full dark before 5 pm. It has fat and protein in it, which makes it satisfying to eat, and it has all that leafy stuff you are supposed to eat, which allows me to feel virtuous doing it. And the nuts were the leftovers from another recipe I am Plotting, which calls for hazelnut butter...of which more later. It tastes way more complicated than it is, which I attribute to the 2 kinds of vinegar and the magic of caramelization. And it was fast- cooking, styling, photography, photo editing, eating and writing has all taken me less than 90 minutes.