This dish is relatively easy to cook while bringing some very strong flavors and colors to the table. I highly recommend it if you want a weeknight meal that feels slightly fancier than it should be.

Ingredients (for two portions):

  • 160 grams of spaghetti1 (80 grams per person)
  • some olive oil
  • a generous amount of pepper
  • some salt
  • a large bowl packed full of fresh baby spinach
  • the equivalent of one and a half large cloves of garlic2
  • about 30 grams of butter
  • some grated parmesan3

Preparation:

Mise en place

  • rince the spinach and dice them very finely
  • crush the garlic
  • dice the butter

Pasta

  • fill a pan with water and bring it to a boil
  • add a generous amount of salt to your pasta water4
  • add the pasta when the water starts boiling and keep cooking for about 10 minutes (until your pasta is cooked)

Spinach

  • put the olive oil in a wok
  • add a very generous amount of pepper and cook on high heat until the pepper becomes fragrant5
  • add the finely diced spinach (roughly when you add the pasta to its water) and a big pinch of salt6
  • let simmer on medium to low heat until the pasta is ready

Assembly

  • once the pasta is cooked, add a splash of pasta water to the wok, this will help with the consistency of the sauce
  • strain the pasta and add them to the wok (it is fine if there is some pasta water left with the pasta, we added pasta water to the wok anyway)
  • add the crushed garlic and diced butter
  • start mixing on high heat
  • once it is fairly well mixed, sprinkle grated parmesan as you would cover a similar amount of pasta in a plate7
  • mix constantly on high heat until you reach the desired consistency (I recommend aiming for slightly more liquid than your sweet spot, the sauce will thicken further once served) and all the cheese has dissolved into the sauce
  • salt to taste

Credits:

While this dish’s name is the combination of Spaghetti Aglio E Olio and the Italian word for spinach, it is inspired by wanting to do a pasta dish with spinach and having seen this Cacio E Pepe recipe recently. The desire to do a pasta dish with spinach and garlic was born from remembering a surprisingly good spinach and garlic dish I had a few years ago.

  1. I prefer to use long thin pasta such as spaghetti or tagliatelle for this recipe. Ideally, you want pasta that will catch the sauce such as bronze-cut pasta but, you do not need to go that fancy with your ingredients here. ↩︎

  2. Do not forget or omit the garlic. It is a key ingredient in the final flavor. ↩︎

  3. Or any other dry, grated, Italian cheese. It is a component of the sauce so you can go for cheaper options without problems. ↩︎

  4. The pasta will taste better and it will help to salt the sauce later. ↩︎

  5. Be careful not to overdo it and let your pepper burn. ↩︎

  6. The salt is there to help the spinach let go of their water. Yes, it is a salty dish. ↩︎

  7. This is not a cheese sauce, better stay conservative with the amount of cheese. Too much cheese will lead to a heavier sauce. ↩︎