ohitashi with rice + fish

a love letter to spinach <3

Apr 22, 2025

∙ Paid

Hey! On Tuesdays I share easy lunch recipes for paid subscribers. To me, lunch recipes are especially simple to make and simple to clean-up.

Of course you can make the recipe for any mealtime that you’d like! I always include a number of helpful notes for paid subscribers (i.e. ways to make vegetarian/vegan/gluten-free versions of the recipe and other fun notes/ideas).

Want today’s recipe + thorough list of variations/notes?? Become a paid subscriber today!

But first…a quick class announcement!

This coming Sunday — April 27th — I’ll be teaching ‘An Easy Meal for a Picky Group’ — all details above! ^ Want to hang with me and Haley? Come join us! All info is right here. A portion of class proceeds will go to CHOSEN FAMILY LAW CENTER. Got a question about my classes? FAQs are here.

Okay, back to today’s lunch recipe which is a love letter to spinach…

green leafy vegetable — Photo by Nathan Dumlao on Unsplash

Today’s recipe is a love letter to spinach, one of the best parts of spring.

Usually I just sauté spinach with lots of garlic and oil, like I happily prepare almost all greens. Seasoned with salt and maybe a squeeze of lemon, I can’t think of a more perfect side dish or building block of any meal (toss it with pasta + parm / eat it on rice with a fried egg / etc.)

But sometimes I want something less garlicky and more subtle. Enter the great Japanese dish ohitashi (meaning “steeped”), which is just steamed or boiled spinach (or any green, really) that’s squeezed dry and then soaked in a simple dashi broth (see here and here for more info and traditional recipes).

Apropos: three years ago (!!) I wrote about how I prep leafy greens to make them easier to store / prepare / eat — check that out here!!

A hopefully helpful thing: how I prep leafy greens

Julia Turshen

April 19, 2022

Read full story

I almost always order ohitashi when I’m eating at a Japanese restaurant. I didn’t think about making it at home until a few years ago when I was bringing home tons of spinach when I worked at Long Season Farm and thought it’d be a great way to enjoy the fruit (vegetable?) of so much labor.

A picture from my 2021 camera roll — harvesting spinach by hand at LSF!!

To make ohitashi, in addition to spinach, all you need is dashi broth seasoned with some soy sauce and something a little sweet (sugar or something like agave).

If you’re unfamiliar with dashi, the simple Japanese broth made with seaweed and dried fish, Serious Eats has a great primer here, including notes if you’re vegetarian or vegan (just do a kombu broth, perhaps with some dried mushrooms thrown in).

Although dashi is one of the fastest broths you can make, when you want things to be really fast and easy, you can use dashi powder, which is what I do often.

If you’ve been reading this newsletter (or my cookbooks) for a while, you know how much I love Better Than Bouillon — I think of dashi powder as an equivalent. I use HONDASHI, which is one of the most widely available brands (you can get it online or at any Asian grocery store).

….have *feelings* about MSG? Please read this!

To turn ohitashi into a full meal — a beautiful one that can be prepared quickly — I like to put the soaked spinach on a bowl of hot rice and top with some fish. This could be any type of grilled/roasted/pan-fried/air-fried fish, delicious canned fish (see here!), or thin slices of smoked fish (like salmon, trout or whatever you like).

For my notes on air-frying fish, see these two posts: