Spinach Pasta

Three spinach plants were shooting and about to go to seed so something had to be done. That something turned out to be spinach pasta. I’ve made my own pasta quite a few times, but it’s always been normal egg pasta – I’ve never tried putting greens in it but I figured I’d give it a go.
There was one problem however, Frank’s in Germany so I’m cooking for one. From my experience, a 1 egg pasta recipe is more than I can eat and a half-egg pasta is tricky to make but I had an idea; I used the egg white to make macaroons (love those) and the egg yolk for the pasta.

Here’s my egg yolk spinach pasta recipe:

• Blanch and purée 1 small bunch of spinach (you can see how much I used in the photo above – that reduced down to a heaped tablespoon of puréed spinach).
• Mix in 1 egg yolk.
• Add white and semolina flour in equal amounts (or all plain white flour). I used 2 generous tablespoons of each.
• Mix and keep adding flour until you have a stiff dough (I added about another tablespoon). If you’re using a pasta machine, it has to be very stiff. If you’re going to hand roll it, give yourself a break and make it a bit less stiff.
• Knead pasta dough for a couple of minutes.
• Roll out and cut pasta into strips.
• Let dry (or not) then boil for about 5 minutes or until done.

I served mine with a simple tomato sauce. Over a low-ish heat I gently cooked a crushed clove of garlic, a diced tomato and some fresh basil & thyme (the basil and thyme came from the garden, the garlic and tomatoes won’t be ready to harvest for ages).

I’m happy to say that it was really good. The pasta had a slight spinach taste (but not overwhelming) and would have been good with just a bit of parmesan cheese but the tomato topping was perfect.

 
 

 
And here’s desert. I mixed up the coconut macaroons while the spinach was blanching and they baked while I made my pasta dough. Not a bad cooking combination.

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