A good dish of fresh pasta with spinach cream, sausage and the addition of hazelnuts and it’s immediately “can I have seconds?”
Usually, we are inclined to use spinach as a side dish or a complementary ingredient (for example in an omelet), but I assure you that paired with pasta, as in this recipe, they are really tasty!
Rich in vitamins, potassium, fiber, and folic acid, fresh spinach should be consumed more often, but those sold at weekly markets are always full of dirt, need to be cleaned and rinsed repeatedly to remove all impurities, and therefore sometimes are the reason why they are not purchased. But today, with both bagged spinach and frozen cubes available, we have no excuses, just make sure to watch the cooking times to retain all benefits.
But let’s get to the recipe I was inspired by, found years ago while flipping through a cooking magazine, where spinach is cooked in a pan with the sausage removed from its casing and crumbled with a few other ingredients to then dress the pasta. However, I wanted more; I wanted to make the dish creamy! So I added a boiled potato to the list of ingredients.
Did I intrigue you? Let’s go to the kitchen together and prepare the pasta with spinach cream and sausage!
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- Difficulty: Very Easy
- Cost: Medium
- Preparation time: 10 Minutes
- Portions: 2
- Cooking methods: Stovetop
- Cuisine: Italian
- Seasonality: Autumn
- Energy 220.27 (Kcal)
- Carbohydrates 24.32 (g) of which sugars 0.44 (g)
- Proteins 9.91 (g)
- Fat 8.11 (g) of which saturated 0.35 (g)of which unsaturated 1.07 (g)
- Fibers 1.63 (g)
- Sodium 546.97 (mg)
Indicative values for a portion of 169 g processed in an automated way starting from the nutritional information available on the CREA* and FoodData Central** databases. It is not food and / or nutritional advice.
* CREATES Food and Nutrition Research Center: https://www.crea.gov.it/alimenti-e-nutrizione https://www.alimentinutrizione.it ** U.S. Department of Agriculture, Agricultural Research Service. FoodData Central, 2019. https://fdc.nal.usda.gov
Ingredients
- 4 oz spinach, frozen
- 1 sausage
- Half glass white wine (or water)
- salt
- 1 potato (medium)
- 7 oz fresh pasta
- whole peeled hazelnuts (to taste)
Tools
- 1 Blender
Preparation
There is no oil in this recipe because I used the fat contained in the sausage
– Wash the potato, poke holes with a toothpick, and cook it in a bowl covered with water in the microwave for about 4′ at max power (for me 800W). Check with the toothpick that it’s soft (it should not resist), let it cool slightly, then peel and mash it with a fork.
– Heat the pan on the stove, then crumble the sausage after removing the casing; let it brown with no condiments and then add the frozen spinach cubes. Cover and cook for a few minutes with a lid.
– Deglaze with 1/2 glass of white wine or water; then salt and cook covered for at least 5′. Turn off and blend part of the spinach with the potato.
– Put the spinach cream back in the pan and then mix in the pasta that you have decided to cook. After plating, garnish with chopped hazelnuts.
Notes:
– I used a type of fresh pasta called cicatelli (a typical dragged pasta from my area) which cooks in about 6′ from boiling.
– I used a type of fresh pasta called cicatelli (a typical dragged pasta from my area) which cooks in about 6′ from boiling.
F.A.Q.
– Can fresh spinach be used?
– Yes, as long as they are well washed of all dirt and trimmed. There is no need to boil them separately but proceed as with the frozen ones, directly in the pan.
