If you are using very tender 'baby' spinach, simply rinse it well in water without drying it out.

Then make a soffritto by very lightly sautéing a clove or two of garlic, slightly crushed, until it just begins to give off a bit of fragrance. If you're cooking for company, you can remove the garlic at this point for a more elegant presentation. But at home I just leave them in for extra flavor (and it wards off vampires, too!)

Add your raw spinach leaves with the water that clings to them, along with a sprinkling of salt. Toss the spinach leaves well and they will quickly begin to wilt under the heat of the hot oil.

Allow the spinach to simmer and absorb the flavors of the soffritto for just a couple of minutes, until the spinach is well reduced and tender. Adjust the seasoning to taste.

And that's all there is to it!

Now, if you are using more mature spinach—the kind with dark green, crinkly leaves and thick stems—you should trim the leaves of their stems and blanch them for a minute or two in salted water before sautéing. They are easy to trim: just hold each leaf in your hand on each side of the stem. Then pull the stem off with your other hand—it should come off easily. Drain them before adding them to the soffritto. Some recipes, in fact, call for rinsing and squeezing them dry, but, except for specific uses where you really need a 'dry' vegetable (such as in a filling for stuffed pasta) I generally leave a little bit of moisture on the vegetable, and that's the way that Angelina used to do it.