Pasta with Gorgonzola and Fresh Spinach

Oh dear, it’s been a long time since I was here. I’m positively ashamed. I hope I can redeem myself with this Italian pasta with gorgonzola and fresh spinach. Hmm, I was actually supposed to share this recipe a while ago (it’s not a new one; in this heat I hardly cook at all). But two things prompted me to post it today.

The first is that I found out my aunt in Lubin has been asking for more posts (and, while she’s at it, she has a few objections to my fruit kompot). So this is serious. When your aunt starts asking, you can’t just brush it off. So, while I’m at it, greetings to my aunt in Lubin 🙂

But since I’m already getting so deeply personal, so that the other aunts don’t take offence (perhaps some of them read this too), greetings to my aunt in Kraków, my aunt in Sworne Gacie, the little ones at that (I don’t think she reads this), and my two aunts in Białystok (they definitely don’t read this). Finally, my aunt in Słupsk (with greetings to the mayor of Słupsk while I’m at it). I hope I haven’t forgotten any of my aunts. End of the personal interlude.

The second thing that helped this post along (because lately I really haven’t had time to write posts) is the holiday that’s fast approaching. Oh, that holiday has cost me a lot of nerves over the past week, because they cancelled my booking for a very interesting place. But somehow I managed, and now I’ve got what I hope is an even better one.

So you’ve probably guessed that if a post about spinach and gorgonzola has „pasta” in the title (rather than the familiar Polish „makaron”), the holiday must be in Italy. Yes. We’re going to Tuscany for the third time. It’ll be Ninka’s second time, and I hope she’ll like it, because this holiday is really for her. Italy isn’t a random choice. As regular readers of this blog surely know. Ninka’s favourite dishes are pizza and pasta with green Italian pesto. So there’s no getting out of it.

I don’t know whether you’ve seen Bertolucci’s „Stealing Beauty”, but I have a feeling I’ve rented somewhere very similar. An utterly enchanting patch of Tuscan wilderness (not to be confused with Texan, which is quite a different thing 😉 — or so I hope, touch wood. A place like that will definitely encourage cooking in the evenings. So perhaps I’ll manage to put together some sort of report-cum-post for Prymitywna Kuchnia straight from Italy.

Cooking in Italy gives me enormous pleasure (I’ve done it before), mainly because fresh Italian delicacies are so readily available, and because of the rummaging around the shops beforehand in search of the perfect ingredients. Ah, I can’t wait.

Meanwhile, without dragging this out any further, here’s an extremely simple recipe (that’s how I intend to cook in Tuscany too, because full-flavoured ingredients do half the work :). Just a few ingredients, with aromatic gorgonzola cremoso obviously setting the whole flavour. Incredibly mild in taste and only… slightly stinky. Plus fresh spinach. Straight from the field, bought loose by weight. Poetry.

Such a simple dish, really, and yet its flavour is pure poetry. That’s why I warmly recommend it (sic! In this hot weather perhaps I should say „coolly”). What’s more, if you don’t combine spinach prepared this way with gorgonzola with the pasta, once cooled it makes a perfect filling for Italian ravioli.

Recipe at a glance:

Preparation time: 15 – 20 minutes

Serves: as many as you like (the ingredients are enough for 1 very large portion or two small ones)

Calories: does anyone still have the energy to count calories in this heat?

Ingredients for Italian-style green pasta:

• 75 grams gorgonzola (Cremoso)
• 25 decagrams fresh spinach leaves (mine was freshly picked field spinach bought loose by weight, not just the leaves, but of course you can substitute the bagged kind 🙂
• half a small hot red chilli
• 2 cloves garlic
• freshly ground black pepper
• salt
• olive oil
• pasta (as you can see, I used Sicilian maccheroni, little narrow tubes)

Recipe for pasta with gorgonzola and spinach:

First I cooked the pasta in lightly salted water.

I poured a little olive oil into a deep frying pan and heated it. I added a crushed, finely chopped clove of garlic. Literally a dozen or so seconds later, I added the spinach leaves, which I’d washed and blanched earlier (I blanched the spinach in the simplest way: put the washed leaves in a colander and poured boiling water over them).

I stirred and fried it for 2 – 3 minutes, stirring frequently. I added the finely chopped hot chilli, seasoned generously with freshly ground pepper and added the diced gorgonzola. I stirred thoroughly, now practically all the time, until a thick, creamy sauce formed.

I added a little more salt to taste and the pasta I’d cooked earlier. I mixed it all together. Done. Enjoy.