A Must-Try!

Nothing much to say about this recipe other than it was easy, tasty, and made an excellent weeknight meal. We came across it in our much-used copy of Recipes Worth Sharing while making Shrimp and Grits for my MIL's birthday dinner. It looked tasty, and we have salmon in the freezer from Mike's Alaska trip and most of the other ingredients on hand, so it was perfect!

The most "difficult" part was cooking and flaking the salmon, but there are a few things you could do for that. 1) Buy smoked salmon. It's more expensive, but easier to flake and you'll save time cooking it. It will impart a stronger flavor, but I think it would be good in the cream cheese-based sauce. We even talked about smoking our own salmon next time and trying it. I'll post an update when we do. 2) Grill salmon for dinner one night and purposely make enough extra to make this pasta a few days later. It will be cool enough that flaking it will be a breeze, and you save a little time not having to cook everything from scratch.

The only thing we did different from the original was we used fresh spinach instead of frozen. (The original called for a 10-ounce package of frozen spinach that you thawed and squeeze dry.) I'm not a big fan of the texture of frozen spinach, and fresh supposedly has more of the nutrients and "good stuff" anyway. Mike was happy with the swap because it meant we could easily add extra and because it meant spinach salads for dinner as well! Oh! We also saved some of the pasta cooking water to thin the sauce a bit. It was fine that night, but without the additional liquid the leftovers would have been super-thick. That's simply a personal preference, though.

Pasta with Salmon, Spinach and Tomatoes
16 ounces bow tie pasta
1/2 cup chicken broth
1 pound salmon, cooked, flaked, and bones removed
8 ounces cream cheese, cut into cubes
5 to 10 ounces fresh spinach
1 teaspoon minced garlic
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon pepper
1 tablespoon lemon juice
15 cherry tomatoes, cut into halves
1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese

Cook the pasta using the package directions. Drain, reserving some of the pasta water if desired (see above). Heat half the broth with the salmon in a large skillet. Add the cream cheese and cook until the cream cheese melts, stirring frequently. Add the remaining broth, spinach, garlic, salt, pepper and lemon juice. Cook for 3 to 5 minutes or until combined and the spinach is slightly wilted. Add the tomatoes and cook for 2 minutes or until softened. Add the hot cooked pasta and toss to coat. Add reserved pasta water to reach the desired consistency. Spoon into a serving bowl and top with the Parmesan cheese.

Serves 6

UPDATE! Recipes Worth Sharing is now also available for Kindle here, and for Nook here. Isn't technology great?

Comments

  1. Mandy4/10/12, 9:01 AM

    This looks so yummy!!!

    ReplyDelete
  2. hjoyferg4/25/12, 10:44 PM

    A) Yeehaw for salmon!! :D
    B) That cookbook looks awfully familiar! Lots of goodness coming out of there!

    ReplyDelete

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