Good cooks need a few dishes they can make from memory. Things that can save the day on a busy week night when you know you have nothing at home and want to quickly walk into a store and grab what you need and go. This pasta is one of those dishes for me. The idea came from Giada de Laurentiis and I don’t think I’ve changed anything about it, but at this point I’ve made it so many times I can’t remember for sure. It is one of those dishes that can accommodate basic swaps easily, a key skill for a cook to learn. To look at a recipe and see shallot and know onion will be okay or to see spinach and know you’d prefer kale or that in a pinch swiss chard would be just fine, that’s when you go from an okay cook to a better cook. This was one of the first I did that with. The principal is fairly simple.
Ingredients: Small pasta of your choice (I like orecchiette, which I think is what Giada used), log of goat cheese, mixed greens.
That’s it.
The steps are pretty easy too.
- Cook pasta according to package directions
- Drain, keeping a bit of the pasta water aside for making a sauce
- Put pasta back in warm pot you cooked it in
- Add the greens and use the warmth of the pan and the pasta to wilt them
- Add the goat cheese use the ration of about a 1/2 ounce cheese per ounce of pasta
- Add the pasta water just a bit at a time. This turns the goat cheese to a sauce and helps with any greens that need more wilting, stop adding it when the dish is as saucy as you want it
- Finally top with tons of fresh ground pepper, this is the main seasoning for the dish, so don’t be shy
- Ta-da lunch or dinner is served
Other cheese can be used or other greens. I will warn you that while cubed fresh mozzarella does work it will clump together and you won’t get a saucy dish it will be a bit more like mac and cheese, which is never a terrible outcome if you ask me. It will however make cleaning your pan a task likely to ruin a sponge, so proceed with caution on that cheese substitution.