Colorful, tasty and truly good for you
I have a weakness for pasta and spinach. Separately, they are great ingredients, but put them together and you have a guaranteed great meal.
Add a pungent cheese and you can't get any better.
I found this recipe in an old cookbook, but it sounds modern. I guess that makes it a classic.
Bleu cheese is a generic term for any cheese that is spotted with blue-green or blue mold.. That may sound gross to some of you, but really it's pretty tasty.
And it's good for you. You see, those molds are caused by injecting the cheeses with Penicillum cultures (the same stuff used to make penicillin).
Some bleu cheeses are injected with spores before the curds form and others have spores mixed in with the curds after they form. Blue cheeses are typically aged in a temperature-controlled environment such as a cave.
You can whip this up in no time and it's one of those dishes that everyone will assume you spent hours preparing.
Good and good for you. Sounds like a winning combination to me...
Pasta with Spinach and Bleu Cheese
1 box of bow-tie pasta 1 clove of garlic, finely chopped
3 tablespoons of olive oil
1/4 cup of white wine
2 teaspoons of lemon juice
2 cups of milk or cream
1/2 cup of bleu cheese
2 Romantomatoes, seeded and diced
1 bag of spinach
4 teaspoons of diced bell pepper
salt and pepper
- Cook the pasta until it's al dente. Drain and set aside.
- In a saucepan, sauté the garlic in the oil. Add the salt and pepper.
- Deglaze with white wine and lemon juice. Allow the liquid to reduce almost entirely.
- Add the cream (or milk) and the bleu cheese. Mix and add the tomatoes. Allow the liquid to reduce halfway.
- Add the pasta and reheat.
- Put down a layer of the spinach and follow with a layer of the pasta and garnish with the chopped pepper.
