Spinach Sauce Fettuccine

Recently I've wanted to incorporate different foods into my family's diet. My husband agreed with adding a little variety into our meals, specifically eating more vegetables. As for our infant son he eats pretty much everything I give him, but lately he's mostly just asking for fruit. I know that it's normal because children prefer sweet flavored foods, but I want him to eat more veggies. Veggies tend to taste a little bitter, especially when cooked, so I went with the old trick of adding some cheese to make it more appealing. However, that doesn't mean just dumping a bunch of melted imitation cheddar on a few broccoli bits like a lot of our parents did when we were kids!

I wanted to make something healthy with real vegetables and real flavor so I took a look in the fridge. I had some leftover cream cheese and a bunch of fresh spinach so I thought, "yeah, I can work with this." Since my son loves pasta so much it was a no brainer, I'd make a spinach cheese sauce with fettuccine. It's easy to do and so creamy!

Ingredients:

Cream cheese 8 oz
Parmesan Cheese (to taste)
Fresh Spinach 2 - 3 cups
Half and half 1-2 Tablespoons
Salt (to taste)
Fresh Ground Pepper (to taste)



Procedure:

Blanch the spinach. 

Put the cream cheese in a saucepan on a low temperature. 

(You can use the same saucepan you used to blanch the spinach to cut down on dishes.)

Toss in the spinach and start stirring. 

At first it's gonna be a little difficult but with the heat the cheese will slowly start to melt.

(Make sure to keep stirring continuously to avoid burning!)

You'll know the cheese has fully melted when you can stir without feeling any resistance. 

Season with salt and pepper and mix until it's fully incorporated.

Add the parmesan cheese and (surprise!) keep mixing.

You may notice that there are still a few lumps in the sauce, don't worry that's normal.

Add the half and half and keep stirring until you have reached the desired consistency. 

Taste and enjoy!

PS: You can just pour the sauce on top of your plate of pasta, or toss the pasta onto the saucepan combine it before serving. It also works great as a stuffing for pastas like ravioli, lasagna or cannelloni. You could even make the sauce extra thick and serve it as a party dip! 

Pasta after being tossed with the sauce in the pan.

A tasty spinach dip!

How to Blanch Spinach

I was reading up on a recipe recently that called for frozen spinach. I don't usually care for frozen vegetables, especially spinach. The recipe mentioned that frozen spinach was preferable to fresh spinach because of the extra water it retains. So I figured if it was about extra water then I'd just blanch it.

When I was about to get started on that I remembered what it was like when I started out cooking from recipe books. I'd often see recipes I wanted to try but wouldn't because they required you to blanch vegetables, something which I'd never done at the time. At some point years back I decided to man up and try it and add the technique to my repertoire. It was surprisingly easy and very quick!

All of this made me think that there must be other aspiring cooks out there who want to work up the courage to try some recipes but aren't familiar with the basic cooking techniques required. To address this problem I decided that today's post would be the first in a series of how to perform basic cooking techniques. So without further ado here's how to blanch:

Get fresh spinach. Remember that once cooked the spinach will reduce in volume so use a lot of spinach!

Bring the water to a boil and season with salt.

While the water heats to a boil prepare a large bowl of ice water, you'll be needing it soon.

Add (at least) 2 cups of spinach to the boiling water.

Leave it in the boiling water for 30 seconds.

Quickly move it to the bowl of iced water.

Take it out of the iced water after 30 seconds,

Congratulations, you've just learned how to blanch vegetables! Now you can use them in a new recipe or freeze and store them!

Orzo with spinach and sundried tomatoes!

Hi! This recipe has been around my kitchen for a while. Remember my husband’s best friend Allen? Well they came home and I decided to once again make something different and I found this recipe. They loved it! Since then I’ve made this recipe quite a lot. Last time I made it for my side of the family. Hope you guys can love it as much as we did! Enjoy!

Ingredients:

1 pound of orzo boiled and drained

4 Tablespoons of olive oil

2 Tablespoons of unsalted butter

2 shallots, minced

2 garlic cloves, mashed

¼ cup of sundried tomatoes

2 cups of fresh spinach

¼ cup of chicken stock

¼ cup of white wine

¼ cup of toasted pine nuts

Parmesan cheese (to taste)

Salt (to taste)

Fresh basil

Procedure:

1)   Put the olive oil and unsalted butter in the pan. Once heated put the minced shallots and garlic. Wait until the shallots are soft.

2)   Add the sun dried tomatoes and wine; wait a minute or two.

3)   Add the spinach and the stock and let it reduce until the spinach is cooked. (It will look like the canned spinach from Popeye cartoons.) 

4)   Add the drained orzo and mix well.

5)   Add the pine nuts, parmesan cheese and salt to taste.

 6) Enjoy!