Herbed Pasta with Spinach – I’m Stuffed!

I’m so full right now! Chris and I just had a kind of late dinner. Oh I was prepared to cook it by about 6:30, but Chris wasn’t due home from work until eight so I had to wait before I could try out a new recipe.

Yesterday while reading the March issue of Chatelaine (a Canadian Magazine) I came across a recipe for Herbed Pasta with Spinach. I modified the recipe a little bit as we didn’t have any goat cheese (feta) and I couldn’t find a brand I liked in the grocery store yesterday. So I used 3 tablespoons of herb and garlic light Philadelphia cream cheese instead of the goat cheese and I added chicken to the recipe. Yummy!

Here’s the original recipe:

Herbed Pasta with Spinach

• 1/2 of a 450 gm pkg of chunky pasta (rigatoni, rotini) – about 2 cups
• 19 oz can of stewed tomatoes
• 1 tsp Italian Seasoning (or 1/2 tsp each of dried basil and oregano leaves)
• pinch of chili flakes
• 1 cup crumbled goat cheese
• 3 cups baby spinach leaves

• Cook your pasta as per the package directions and set aside.
• Meanwhile, pour tomatoes with juices into a large saucepan and set over medium high heat. Add seasonings. Boil uncovered, stirring often to develop flavors – about 3 minutes. Reduce heat to low and simmer, uncovered, stirring occasionally while pasta cooks.
• When the pasta is cooked, drain and then stir pasta into the tomato mixture along with half of the goat cheese. (Here’s where my recipe differs. I added the light cream cheese directly to the stewed tomatoes when they were simmering as I didn’t have any feta cheese). Stir in the spinach leaves (they will wilt quickly once added to the hot pasta) and serve with the remaining cheese sprinkled on top.
• My recipe also differed in that I added chicken to it. Prior to making the sauce and pasta I got out a large skinless boneless chicken breast, cut it into bite sized pieces and then sauteed the meat in a pan with some Italian spices, basil and garlic. I then set the chicken aside until the pasta dish ready and topped our servings with the chicken pieces.

Delicious!

I only used half the sauce and half the chicken that I’d cooked for our meal so we’ll have this dish again tomorrow. I certainly don’t mind eating the same meal for dinner two nights in a row – not when it was this tasty!

Do you ever come across recipes in magazines that look and or sound so tasty that you want to try making them right away?