Pesto Pasta with Spinach and Bow Ties Recipe

Allie: Cook on Sunday, eat until Thursday, I'm Allie and you're watching
Economy Bites.

So we just spent about $20.00, $25.00 at the grocery store and now
I'm going to get started making my pesto pasta with spinach and
sausage.

The first thing I'm going to do is put my water on to boil for my
pasta. I'm going to use the entire box of pasta so I need a lot of
water, bow ties. That’s the kind I like but you can really use penne
shells. Okay that’s good.

If you can’t afford the weights, you could just lift pots with water
in them. You like my new canisters of salt?

What I'm going to use to make pesto is basil. I'm very excited to
show you my brand new little Cuisinart mini food processor given
to me by my delicious mother. Thank you, mom. You could use a
blender. If you don’t have a blender, I suggest get one.

Alright, I'm going to use about two cups of it. Please ignore the
race crimes happening outside.

Chop off the stems. Well, I guess I just pull them off. One time I
worked at a pizza restaurant and we have to memorize the
ingredients from pesto and so that’s how I know it. Basil, pine nut,
sauce about blah-blah-blah base. Everybody who ate with me in
DC at the restaurant where I worked, I'm sorry.

I'm just going to pack it down three cloves of garlic. That always
happens to me. Do you think I need like a rebound basket?

And just real, quick dice. I'm going to toss that in there with my
basil, pine nuts, stir it a couple. I'm going to add my garlic and my
basil. You know you're packed.

Now I'm going to give it a grind. I love this little machine. It has
changed my life. You have to go in a bunch of times and like move
ingredients down to make sure that everything gets near quick,
perfect.

Now we’re going to add about half a cup of olive oil, add it slowly
and pour. See how it’s getting more liquidy down here? The last
thing I'm going to add to this is ¾ cups of Parmesan cheese. I have
some good Parmesan cheese here. You can use the canned stuff as
always, perfect. It looked good.

Now it’s time to salt, the black pepper. My water is starting to boil
back there. And I'm going to take a lemon and squeeze. Try not to
put any seeds in there. Here it is. Look at that pretty color.

Now I could have cut this out so you didn’t see the mess I'm
making but you know what? I am not ashamed making this nor my
fate. This is real cooking in a real kitchen. You're going to make a
mess and you're just going to have deal with it.

Set it in the refrigerator. I'm going to start sauté some spinach for
this pasta salad with a little bit of lemon, scallions, garlic, a little
bit of chicken stock. I got lazy and I did not buy the fresh spinach.
I bought it already in the bag assuming that’s probably three or
four cups.

You don’t want it to be like in huge pieces. You know, the darker
the lettuce is, the better it is for you. If you don’t buy the stuff in
the bag, cut off the stems. Scallions. I'm just going to take two big
stocks, run my knife through it one more time. Six cloves of garlic.
It doesn’t need to be pretty but they do need to be small.

Okay. So I added my garlic to my scallions. This whole side is
broken. This is what happens when you rent, rent your apartment.

Go medium low. I don’t want my garlic to burn. I'm going to get
my sausage ready. I’ll be using about a pound, sweet Italian
sausage. You could use spicy Italian sausage, turkey sausage or
you can even— I’ve made this using salami because I bought
salami accidentally one time so I was like, “Alright, let’s use it.”
And it was actually really good.

I'm going to take my garlic and my scallions. Now I'm just going
to just give those a few minutes to cook, a little al dente. Give them
a little more time.

So now I'm going to start adding my spinach. It looks like a lot
now but it’s going to wilt so we’re going to add a little bit of
chicken stock.

We’re just going to let this cook. It’s going to take maybe five
minutes.

So I guess really it’s only really been like two or three minutes.

Look how much smaller that has gotten. Now you're going to leave
the pan on the heat, now on medium to medium high because
we’re going to cook our sausage in that.

Now I'm just going to put a little bit of salt on our greens here.
What is this called? Pepper? Take the other half of the lemon from
the one we’re used in the pesto before. The last thing to do is to
sauté our sweet Italian sausage.

Season it with a little salt and pepper. You see all the things are
already starting to brown? You want to move it around and make
sure it doesn’t burn.

We’re multi using so it’s not tapped to wash a million things and
because I just don’t have that many bowls. I'm going to turn that
off and put that in there. Rinse with cold water and make it stop
cooking. Get a little steam bath facial. That’s the way spinach—

I want to make sure to cook this sausage all the way through
because we don’t want an E. Coli. Nobody is suing Economy
Bites, no, no, no. We don’t have a lawyer.

So I'm going to cut one of these side open making sure there is no
red in the middle.

Keep loosing sausage. That’s going to be back there for God
knows how long.

Sweet Italian sausage. That was my nickname in high school. I'm
just kidding, I'm not Italian. They called me sweet Jew sausage.

We’re going to pour off that excess and put it in my pastas
draining dish, brilliant.

Now if you want, this would be a place where you could also add
some tomatoes or some rose— you know, what will be good is
some sun dried tomatoes. Here are some of messes.

The last thing I'm going to do is take my second lemon that I
bought from the store, crushed red pepper. Just a little garnish here.
Give it a little red color and Walla.

This pasta pesto is so good and it just gets better the longer it sits
in the fridge. You can eat it hot. You can eat it cold. You can eat it
room temperature. You can eat it with a salad. You can eat it by
itself. You can do a million things with it.

I think I'm going to have to have a bite. That is so good really,
very, very good. Wow! I'm so impressed with myself.

Male: When should you make it and how much should you eat?

Allie: Cook it on Thurs—you should make it on Sunday. Cook it on
Sunday, eat it until Thursday. I'm Allie and I’ll see you next week.