Spinach and cheese sauce with pasta

< Local and seasonal recipes

Season

 * UK, March

A simple recipe to use up a crop of perpetual spinach, or ordinary spinach. Takes about 20 mins including preparation.

You'll need enough spinach so that when cooked and chopped it'll be enough to balance the cheese sauce. This time of year the leaves can be quite small so around 50 - 60 maybe. Wash the leaves then cut out the thick central stems.

Boil some pasta, such as pasta shells. Meanwhile make a cheese sauce that'll be enough to more than cover the pasta. Cook the spinach in the normal way, then chop finely and add to the cheese sauce. (Many decent cookery books will tell you how to make a white / cheese sauce and how to cook spinach).

Drain the pasta and then add to the sauce so that you can get the right balance - not too much pasta - so that there's still a fairly generous ratio of sauce to pasta.