MoFo Day 3: Quick and Easy Spinach Pasta

Hello again! Thanks for joining me on day three for Vegan Month of food! Today’s prompt is; Quick, easy and delicious. I’m going to share with you my girls favorite pasta dish that they ask for multiple times a week. Normally I don’t measure anything and simply adjust taste as I go so feel free to change whatever to suit your needs. And to be honest I’d have added at least an extra cup of pasta if we hadn’t been out. This made two  servings though it could be stretched to three had I made side dishes or had soup to go with it. My 10 and 7 year old each had a plate like you see below.

 

 

Spinach Pasta 

~2 servings alone or 3 with side dishes

Ingredients:

2 cups pasta

We like to use cavatappi, elbows or gemelli but you can use any. Unless you are cooking for two people you should increase pasta accordingly; if using cavatappi 1c per person.

1.5c frozen spinach

Sauce:

One large onion (yellow, white, or sweet) or about 1.5 cups  diced

¼ tsp Black Pepper

½ tsp. Salt

1tsp.  Garlic powder

1 to 1 ½ Tbsp. Sweet Paprika

¼ c. water from the boiling pasta or more as needed

Butter or oil; I used the spoonful of earth balance you can see in the 3^rd collage picture

Method:

Depending on the amount of noodles bring the frozen spinach and necessary amount of water in an appropriately sized pot to a boil. Add Pasta and cook per package instructions.  Strain with a fine holes strainer so you don’t lose your spinach down the drain.

 

Dice onions and start sautéing on medium high while water comes to a boil and the pasta cooks. Adjust oil/butter as needed you don’t want the onions sticking but you don’t want them soupy. Cook until fully cooked and most of the onions are getting nicely browned. Reduce heat to low add liquid from the boiling pasta. It’s okay if stray spinach finds its way in; do try to avoid bigger pieces, add remainder of sauce ingredients mix very well. 

You want it a bit gravy like but not too runny (see second picture below) if you cooked the onions in a large enough pan you can simply dump the drained pasta into the onion mixture mix well and serve or you can add the onion to the pasta I refer the first way since you get all the flavor clinging to the bottom of the pan BUT honestly it doesn’t matter which way you do it.

Adjust to taste and enjoy!!

I measured out the spices  like I normally would thinking we had more pasta If I had made the full  3-4 servings I’d have used 2c. Frozen spinach, a full 2c.of diced onion and probably more salt, an extra shake of garlic powder, a touch more oil, and more water from the pasta to make the sauce work with the quantity of pasta, but I wouldn’t double everything.