This is seriously the most uncreative name for a dish. But I didn’t name it, so I guess it’s okay.
Penne with blue cheese, tomatoes and spinach wasn’t one of my favorite dishes that I have made thus far, but it was still good.
Ingredients you will need: penne pasta, ¾ cup crème fraïche, 1 tbsp grainy Dijon mustard, 5 oz (1 cup) creamy blue cheese, 1 pint cherry tomatoes, 4 cups baby spinach, ½ tsp black pepper, 1 tbsp butter, 1 tbsp olive oil and 2 leeks.
Now, you might be thinking, What the heck is a leek? It sounds gross. Because that’s what I was thinking. But a leek is just a cousin of the onion, except it is long and think like celery.
Also, crème fraïche and creamy blue cheese can both be found in the cheese department at Wegman’s, although I had to ask someone where to find them both. And the Dijon mustard can be found in the condiments aisle 🙂
Lastly, I think mushrooms would go rather well with this dish too, so please try and let me know how it is!
What to do:
1. Boil water for the pasta and cook according to package directions.
2. In a large skillet, heat oil and butter until melted. Stir in leeks and cover; cook on low heat for 10 minutes, stirring once or twice until softened. (I do not own a skillet, but I do own a large frying pan, so I just used that, and when it came to combining the mixture with the pasta, dumped it all into a large bowl for mixing purposes–worked fine.)
3. Stir crème fraïche, mustard and pepper into leeks until well blended. Then stir in the blue cheese until well melted. (The original recipe said to leave ¼ of the blue cheese out and top the pasta with it when it was done, but I found I didn’t really like it that way.)
4. Drain pasta, saving 1/3 cup of the water. Stir pasta and mixture together, adding the cooking water bit by bit to coat the pasta with the sauce. Stir in spinach. (You are supposed to stir until it wilts, but mine never wilted.)
And walah!
Fact I learned from this dish: get all of your ingredients measured out and ready to go BEFORE you start because cooking happens fastttt.
Also, be sure to finish this a maximum of two days after making it, because after that it just stinks up your fridge!
Recipe thanks to Redbook magazine.