Okay so now you have fresh pasta. Now what? Well there are a number of things you could to with it. The simplest of those is some butter and a sprinkling of parmesan cheese (and lots of black pepper if you’re like me). You might even throw in some fresh herbs. But, how about adding some wilted greens like Luisa Weiss did?

My Greenling box had some collard greens and kale. For this I used the kale, but I’m sure other kinds of greens would work. Although, now that I think about it, I would probably avoid beet greens or red chard as they would turn the pasta an unappetizing shade of pink. But who knows, maybe you like that kind of thing? Edit: I have now had pasta made with beet greens and I found that “pink noodles”, as I called them, are sort of amusing. They were also rather delicious. Maybe it’s just me, but I wasn’t put off at all by the color of the noodles. I thought I would be. Sorry to judge prematurely. LESSON. LEARNED.

So here is what you’re going to do:

1. Melt some butter in a large skillet. Add 1/4 of a cup of chopped onion and two minced cloves of garlic. Cook for a minute or so. Then a few handfuls at a time add two bunches of greens (thoroughly washed, with tough stems removed and chopped or torn into small pieces). Stir after each addition to wilt the greens a little before adding the next handful.

2. Add salt, pepper and nutmeg to taste, then add about a cup of water or stock and cook until the greens are tender and the liquid is mostly reduced.

3. At this point you should have timed your pasta to be done cooking. Drain the pasta reserving some cooking liquid. Add 1/3 cup of garlic and herb cheese (i.e. Boursin, Alouette, or Full Quiver Farms Basil-Garlic Cheese Spread) or ricotta cheese. Salt to taste.

4. Melt the cheese into the greens and add some pasta cooking water to thin it out if needed. Then, dump the pasta into the greens and cheese mixture and toss. Finish with some black pepper and grated parmesan or pecorino romano cheese.

Tags: budget, cheese, economical, fresh, greens, italian, kale, onion, pasta, peppercorn

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 26th, 2008 at 9:13 am and is filed under budget recipes, main dishes, pasta, vegetarian. 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.