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

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Finally Fall

Image
On tonight's menu...Monday Night Football and Moroccan Carrot Soup!  That peeler is one of the cheapest and best kitchen gadgets I own! Nothing says Fall has arrived like football and soup, and since the temps around here finally dropped below the 80s, it was time to break out the soup pot. I first tried this carrot soup at my aunt's house several months ago, and I couldn't wait to make it again so Mike could try it, too. It's really easy to make, and I believe relatively healthful. I'm not sure where the original recipe came from, so consider this one, "From the Kitchen of Aunt Sheryl." I used Greek yogurt, and doubled the recipe so we could have leftovers for lunches. The recipe as listed says it will serve 4. Drizzling in the honey... Moroccan Carrot Soup 2 Tbl butter 1 cup chopped white onion 1 lb large carrots, peeled and chopped into ½-inch pieces 2½ cups low-salt chicken broth 1 Tbl honey 1 tsp fresh lemon juice ⅛ tsp ground allspice...
Read more

Not Above Bribery...

No new recipe today, folks (that will come tomorrow). Instead, I'm introducing a month-long "game," if you will. Here's the deal: 1. During the month of February, be sure to not only visit my blog, but to also post comments on my blog posts. 2. For every comment you make on my blog, you will have an entry in a drawing I'm holding. 3. On March 1st, I will choose one name from the hat. The winner will receive a free copy of Recipes Worth Sharing , a fantastic cookbook valued at $24.95 that I use often (remember the shrimp and grits I made?). That's all you have to do. The more comments you make, the more chances you have at winning. I will limit it to one Comment per blog post so we don't have people posting one word at a time or something equally crazy. Please use your best judgement. I hope you're as excited about this as I am. After all, who doesn't love FREE stuff?!
Read more

Butternut Squash Soup, Take 2

Image
A few days ago, I posted a recipe for a super-simple, super-scrumptious Butternut Squash Soup. Unaware of how many squash to buy for that particular dish, I bought 2 and ended up needing only 1. And so, here is Butternut Squash Soup, take 2. I know, I could make myriad other recipes with my squash, but it’s cold and rainy, and who doesn’t love soup on a cold and rainy day? This time I went for a more “gourmet” soup, Creamy Butternut Squash and Ginger-Apple Soup from ** Starfish Café: Changing Lives One Recipe at a Time . The basics are the same: Sauté some onion in butter. Add squash and broth, and purée everything when tender. The “gourmet” part of this comes in the addition of apples, cinnamon, nutmeg, saffron, and yogurt. Yummy indeed. Now, before you rush out to buy the ingredients and notice that saffron is crazy expensive, let me tell you something—saffron is crazy expensive. Don’t feel like you have to add it. Many recipes I read encourage using turmeric in place of saffron (...
Read more