Quick and Easy Pasta with Spinach

Sarah, my daughter, recently decided that she loves spinach………and tomatoes aren’t so bad, either.  Yea! 

Put the two together and you’ve got the beginning of a great pasta dish.  This is a quick and easy recipe – perfect for a busy evening.  I use corkscrews, because they are Sarah’s favorite shape of pasta, but a longer spaghetti or fettucine would work well, too.  Preparing the dish with tomatoes helps the body to more easily absorb the iron found in the spinach.

Spinach and Tomato Corkscrews 

1 lb of corkscrew pasta
1/4 cup olive oil
1 cup diced purple onions
1 tsp finely diced garlic
6 cups fresh Spinach
2 cups tomatoes, chopped
salt
pepper
1/2 cup grated parmesan (optional)

As pasta cooks, start the sauce. Saute onions in olive oil until translucent. Add garlic, then spinach. As spinach wilts, add in tomatoes, then salt and pepper as needed. Pasta should be ready right around this point. Take out one cup of hot pasta water, set aside, then drain pasta. Dump pasta into sauce pan. Use tongs to turn the pasta over and over, to move the spinach and tomato throughout the pasta. Add 1/2 cup of the pasta water, continue turning over. This makes the vegetables saucier. Add the rest of the water, then sprinkle the cheese and work it through.

image credit – Michelle