Ypsi Cooks

I love looking out our living room window: the snap peas are climbing their fences (Eli runs outsde to pick them daily), the lettuce is in its multicolored glory, the spinach is going great guns and right outside the window grows our beautiful, burgundy peonies. They're perfect. But there are only so many meals one can create out of lettuce, spinach and kale (we have yet to have enough peas left over after garden consumption to actually have them with a meal). With the help of Lynn Rosetto Casper's How to Eat Supper, I have hit upon something our garden can provide us these days. While our basil plants are just a few inches tall, we've had chives since April. Chopping the chives with garlic, salt and pepper combines the flavors in a really delightful way, and allowing spinach to wilt in the heat of the pan & drained pasta really makes it “meltingly” soft. I really hadn't understood that term before today when I bit into lunch and found the spinach, well, melting.As is the case with this type of dish, measurments are approximate and eyeballing makes sense: this dish is mostly art, very little (if any) science.

3 cloves garlic
1/4 tsp salt
1/8 tsp freshly ground pepper
3/4-1 cup snipped chives (1/4-1/2″ length will do just fine)
1/2 cup pistachios (walnuts, almonds and pine nuts would also work well)
olive oil
1 loosely packed salad spinner of spinach (4-6 cups??) coarsly chopped/torn
parmesan or asiago for shredding on top
(the first time I made this I did a slightly smaller amount of chives and one cube of basil pesto)
1 lb of pasta (we used a large penne) (12oz will do, but all the pasta we buy is 1 lb bag so it never makes any sense to me to make any less)

Put salt and pepper on the cutting board and smash the garlic with the side of a knife. Coarsely mince the garlic, add the chives and continue to mince until rather fine. Add the nuts and coarsely chop. Drizzle with olive oil and chop/fold a little more.

In the mean time, boil and salt the water to cook the pasta. Add the pasta and cook al dente. Reserve 1/2 cup cooking liquid and drain the pasta. Immediately add the chive pesto and spinach to the hot pan, stir allowing the residual heat to mellow the garlic and gently wilt the spinach. Add the pasta back to the pot and stir adding any necessary liquid. Add salt, pepper and olive oil to taste. Serve with cheese.

Some variations I might try:
Serve with slices of salami
Put 3 oz of cream cheese and 1/4 cup of cooking liquid (reserve 1 cup) in the pot while pasta drains. Mix on low heat until smooth. Remove from heat and add the pesto. Stir until starting to wilt, then add the pasta and stir some more.

Alternatively, food process or blend the pesto ingredients in the same order.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 10th, 2009 at 3:29 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.