Meera Sodha's vegan recipe for spinach and butter bean stew with toasted pine nuts | The new vegan

When it's cooked for longer, spinach takes on a soft and sweet personality that goes supremely well with comforting butter beans and crunchy, toasted pine nuts

With a lot of vegetables, the philosophy is the fresher, the better. While that can certainly be the case, especially in summer, cooking some vegetables for longer brings out a different characteristic. I used to religiously cook spinach until just wilted, so that the leaves were still bright and there was a crunch to the stem. But that isn't the spinach I grew up with - or the one I've resurrected in today's recipe. When it's cooked for longer, spinach takes on a dark emerald colour, and becomes soft, sweet and as comforting as the butter beans with which it shares this pot.