Simple Two Ingredient Spinach Pasta

Happy new year! I’ve gained many lovely new followers in 2016 and I want to say thank you to each and every one of you. But without further ado, on with the food. Today I am bringing you a recipe to make your own spinach pasta with just two ingredients; spinach and flour. I just can’t get over the deceptive simplicity of this recipe, and how spinach and flour in a 2:3 ratio can become this gorgeous green coloured pasta. And if you’re on a new year’s health kick, it’s packed with iron from the spinach.

Spinach pasta ready to cook

This recipe is Jamie Oliver genius and featured on his TV series Jamie’s Super Food. Complete credit to him for the pasta recipe. I did, however, adapt what I served mine with. The original recipe can be found on Jamie Oliver’s website here and uses courgettes, tomatoes, pine nuts and Parmesan.

Spinach pasta in the making

One thing to note: You will need a food processor for this recipe to make the pasta dough. I can’t see how it would work without because it is used to form the dough, sorry if this excludes you!

Spinach pasta in the making

Ingredients [To serve 4]:
For the pasta:
200 g spinach
300 g plain flour
For the toppings:
2 courgettes
24 cherry tomatoes, halved
Two small red onions, chopped
12 rashers of bacon, chopped into small pieces (kitchen scissors are great for this)
Grated cheddar cheese to top
30 g pine nuts

Method:

Step 1. Process the spinach and flour in a food processor. (I suggest you buy a bag of spinach which is pre-washed as I imagine if you washed the spinach beforehand, the moisture on the spinach would impact the dough consistency – mine worked perfectly using dry spinach). When you first begin to blitz the mixture it will look like green dust, but don’t panic! Continue to process the mixture and it will turn into a bright green dough.

Step 2. Remove the ball of dough from the processor and break off small pieces. Roll each piece into long, thin shapes approximately the length and width of green beans.

Step 3. Dry fry the pine nuts in a frying pan until they just begin to toast. Remove and set aside.

Step 4. In the now empty pan, fry the toppings. Start with the onion, adding the chopped bacon and courgette when the onion is soft and adding the tomatoes only a couple of minutes before the end of cooking.

Step 4. Meanwhile, add the pasta to a pan of boiling water for 6 minutes. (Unless you’ve left the pasta to dry out, in which case the original recipe recommends you boil it for 8-10 minutes).*

Step 5. When cooked, drain the pasta, toss in the topping ingredients from the frying pan, stir up and serve, topping with some grated cheese. And devour!

Pasta toppings

The pasta has a lovely chewy texture and I loved its flavour as I often find normal pasta a little bland. There are endless topping opportunities, as I imagine most, if not all, the traditional pasta toppings would work great with this spinach pasta too. I’m leaning towards trying it with smoked salmon next time.

*I froze half of the pasta I made, as I was only cooking for two, so I’ll report back on this, and whether freezing works once I’ve tried defrosting them!

Spinach pasta meal topped with pine nuts and cheese