Fast and furious creamy spinach pasta

I usually cook a huge pot of something on Sundays and package it up for the week to have for lunch and/or dinner. It makes the start of the week easier to handle. This weekend, I did not get around to making my usual standby of assembly-line meals.

I was out most of the day on Monday and when I returned home I was famished. There was nothing to warm up and nosh on. After I devoured a can of smoked oysters with some bread, I began to think about what to make for dinner. I had less than an hour to make something before I scooted off to my Pilates class.

I decided to make spaghetti because it is fast and I had a hankering for carbs. I found this recipe for pasta with creamy spinach walnut sauce posted by eat me, delicious who adapted the original recipe from the "Moosewood Restaurant Low Fat Favourites."

Did I have any walnuts? No, but that didn't stop me. I used pine nuts instead.

The sauce, or pesto, as I like to call it was...delicious!

This is a forgiving recipe because although I only used 1 cup of cottage cheese (instead of 2 cups) and dried basil, rather than freeze-dried (not sure what that is), the sauce was not lacking in flavour or thickness.

Furthermore, I had no broccoli in the fridge so I skipped that part entirely.

But I did add a few glugs of extra virgin olive oil because I enjoy olive oil and it tastes great on pasta dishes. I guess since I added oil to this dish it can no longer be considered "low-fat."
Who cares? Let's move on...


So without further delay, here is my version to this recipe below:

3 cups packed fresh spinach
1/4 cup toasted pinenuts
1 cup low-fat cottage cheese
2 garlic cloves
1/4 cup grated Parmesan cheese
1/4 cup dried basil
1/4 tsp salt
ground black pepper to taste
1/2 lb pasta

Wash and clean the spinach. Steam the spinach on medium heat for about 4 minutes. Do not over cook. Remove spinach from steam basket. Shake off excess moisture or water from spinach.

In a food processor, add the spinach, pine nuts, cottage cheese, garlic, Parmesan, basil, and salt and puree until smooth. Add pepper to taste and set aside.

Make the pasta according to package instructions. For 'al dente' cook less. For softer pasta cook longer. Drain pasta and rinse under cold water to slow down the cooking process and to keep the pasta from sticking.

Transfer the cooked pasta into a large bowl and add a few more drops of olive oil. Then ask your sous chef, er...your husband/wife/partner to add the creamy spinach pesto to the pasta as you scoot out the door for Pilates, or whatever else you are in a hurry to get to. Oh! and ask them to also take a photo of the finished meal for your blog.

Roasted Tempeh with Creamy Dijon Sauce

When I first made the switch from meat to eating tofu and tempeh, I had no vegan/vegetarian cookbooks or friends to tell me how to properly prepare it. Through much trial and error, I believe I have finally mastered it.

I have learned a great deal about cooking by reading recipes from cooking sites and other food bloggers. For instance, I never used to press my tofu before marinading it until kickpleat from Everybody Likes Sandwiches suggested it in one of her posts.

With this tempeh recipe, the blogger mentions boiling the tempeh for 10 minutes to remove the 'bitterness', which I had never done before. Tempeh (like tofu) is an acquired taste but if properly prepared you can have a delicious high protein dish that will have even the most avid meat eaters...ahem...husband...asking for seconds.

sorry for the bad photo, but the taste of the tempeh makes up for it

I found this recipe on Vegan Yum Yum's blog who had linked to the recipe from l. a. kitchen's blog, so whoever was the original creator of this recipe, I apologize in advance if I did not reference you.

Sometimes, as a recipe makes it's way around the blogworld and others re-create it, they will use ingredients not mentioned in the original recipe, but rather whatever they happen to have on hand. This actually happened to me today, when I was preparing this. I did not realize I was out of apple cider vinegar and soy milk and fresh rosemary, so I used my own substitutes which seem to have made no difference in sacrificing taste at all.

Roasted Tempeh with Creamy Dijon Sauce

Marinade for the Tempeh:
1 lb. tempeh, cut into 4 portions ( I used a thin slab which is probably 1/2 lb)
1 1/2 cups vegetable stock
1/2 cup wheat-free tamari
1/8 cup rice vinegar
2 bay leaves
2 Tbsp. finely chopped fresh rosemary ( I used 1 tbs dry)
3 garlic cloves, minced

NOTE: I found that the marinade for the tempeh yielded too much liquid. I only used a slab of tempeh as opposed to 1 lb., so if you make this, you might want to halve the amount of tamari and/or veggie stock unless you are using a lot of tempeh to begin with.

Bring a medium pot of water to a boil and drop in the tempeh. Cook for about 10 minutes. (Tempeh has a mildly bitter flavor that boiling will remove.)

Meanwhile, mix together the vegetable stock, tamari, rice vinegar, bay leaves, rosemary, and garlic.

Place the tempeh in a baking pan and pour the liquid mixture on top. Bake, uncovered, for 30 to 40 minutes in a 350°F oven, turning once halfway through. Remove from the oven but leave the tempeh in the pan to soak up the remainder of the liquid while it cools to ensure moist tempeh.

After the liquid is absorbed (or pour it off if there is too much left), reheat in the oven until slightly browned on the edges, about 10 minutes or so.

For the Dijon Sauce:
1/2 cup grainy Dijon mustard
1/2 cup cider vinegar (I used rice wine vinegar)
1/4 cup soy milk ( I used almond milk)
2 Tbsp. maple syrup (I used 2 tsp)
2 Tbsp. honey (I used 2 tsp)

Mix together all the ingredients in a small saucepan over medium heat and bring to a simmer.
Cook for 20 minutes, until slightly thickened, stirring frequently.

Serve the tempeh with your preferred choice of sides. I had my tempeh with baby potoatoes roasted in the oven with paprika, salt, pepper and garlic powder and some slices of grilled fennel bulb with olive oil, salt, pepper and a few small dabs of Earth Balance vegan margarine.

The creamy dijon sauce was very delicious and tangy and the mustard flavour was not too overpowering considering I reduced the amount of honey and maple syrup. As for the the tempeh, the texture was firm (and less mushy) and I found, not as 'earthy' tasting after the boiling process. So, all in all, boiling tempeh might be a good thing to do if you dislike that mushroom-y flavour that tempeh naturally has. This was seriously a good dish and I will be making the creamy dijon sauce again to add to other faux-meats.