Spinach are plump and tender and can be prepared by boiling with soy sauce, water, and tofu. In Hangzhou, people know this as “Gold inlaid on a slab of white jade”. This vegetable is thin but quite meaty2 and thus does not require cooking with bamboo shoot tips or shitake.
菠菜
菠菜肥嫩，加醬水、豆腐煮之。杭人名金鑲白玉板是也。如此種菜雖瘦而肥，可不必再加筍尖、香蕈。
Notes:
1Bocai (菠菜), or spinach, in Chinese literally translates to “Persian vegetable”, which points out the degree of trade between the two peoples in Ancient times.
2Say literally “lean but fat”, I’m going out on a limb here with this translation but I don’t think it is inaccurate.
Sean J.S. Chen 
I’ve been looking forward to this one!
Liang Zhangju 梁章钜 has a hilarious entry on spinach 波棱菜 in the collection Langji santan 浪迹三谈 that starts off with the claim, “Spinach is the most flavorless of vegetables; its inclusion in Suiyuan Shidan is inexplicable.” He never has it cooked, so his chefs seldom have it on hand. Then he gets a post in Beijing, where imperial chefs serve spinach at every meal, but he still doesn’t touch the stuff until enough visiting officials have raved over it to make him sufficiently curious. Tender spinach leaves fried in heavy oil with dried shrimp make for an amazing dish. So when he takes trips back home he has his chefs cook spinach, only to be served the same old tasteless disappointment.
In the same entry, Liang also takes issue with the claim that “gold inlaid on a slab of white jade” is a name used in Hangzhou for a spinach dish. He relates an anecdote about the Yongle Emperor enjoying a meal with dishes of yellow dried tofu and stir-fried spinach while on an inspection tour. Asked for the names of the dishes, the proprietor replied with two flowery titles; “white jade” was the dried tofu, while 红嘴绿鹦哥 “red-beaked green parakeet” was the spinach.
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The parakeet does seem to make more sense in terms of colour than the gold. Though in terms of the sound of the name and coherence, perhaps an object of jade and gold inlay fits a narrative of luxury and also rolls off the tongue.
It could also be that 金 referred to a tarnished bronze, greenish metal alloy, or perhaps even green gold? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrum
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