A green leafy vegetable, spinach ( Spinacia oleracea ) is a native of southwestern Asia. The plant reached China as a gift from Nepal during the first years of the Tang dynasty (the early seventh century A.D.) and was introduced in Sicily in 827 by invading Saracens from North Africa - they having first encountered the plant in Persia. However, spinach seems to have been in no hurry to spread out over the rest of Europe, although it may well have done so without recorded mention during those centuries of the Middle Ages that food historian Reay Tannahill has called “The Silent Centuries.” The vegetable probably reached Spain with the invading Moors, but it was not until the very end of the Middle Ages that spinach showed up in a cookbook published anonymously in Nuremberg in 1485. After this it caught on rather quickly on the Continent, probably in no small part because spinach made its appearance in early spring, when other fresh vegetables were still scarce yet human bodies were…