20-minute tomato & spinach pasta.
Cook this recipe here, or use 4DK to check your pantry, scale portions and keep track of your adaptations.
smart second.
Ingredients
Method
Boil the pasta.
Cook in well-salted water until just shy of your preferred doneness. Reserve about a cup of pasta water.
Build the tomato base.
Warm the oil, add garlic, then tomatoes. Cook until the tomatoes soften and release their juices.
Add spinach.
Wilt it into the tomato base. Do not keep cooking it after it has collapsed.
Finish together.
Add pasta and enough reserved pasta water to help the sauce coat the noodles.
Season.
Add pepper, chilli if wanted and cheese if available. Taste before adding more salt.
What can I change without breaking the recipe?
Swap spinach for another quick-cooking green, use tinned tomatoes instead of fresh, or leave out cheese. The structure survives because the important jobs are starch + tomato base + green + emulsifying pasta water.
Use another green.
Kale needs more time; soft herbs need much less. The function is “green vegetable,” but the timing still changes.
Use tinned.
Reduce it slightly longer so the sauce is not watery before the pasta goes in.
Skip it.
The pasta water still helps the sauce cling. Cheese is a finish, not the structural reason the sauce works.
What changes when I cook for two instead of four?
Halve the ingredient quantities, but do not blindly halve pan size, pasta-water reserve or tasting. Cooking behaviour does not scale as neatly as arithmetic.
Halve quantities.
350 g pasta becomes roughly 175 g. Do the same for tomatoes and spinach.
Keep enough surface.
A smaller batch can reduce faster, so watch the tomato base instead of using the same clock time.
Taste again.
Salt, chilli and cheese should be adjusted by taste rather than treated as perfectly linear.
Cook it once.
Keep your version.
4DK can compare the recipe with Pantry, move the missing items into Shop, adapt around what is actually available, and remember that you used kale instead of spinach or skipped the cheese last time.
Open in 4DK →
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