Creamy Spinach Pasta

We had our first official "Indian" dish last night. Actually, it's a rather simple dish but that's how I am choosing to start this adventure... with simple dishes that I feel comfortable making.

This is Creamy Spinach Pasta, as made by my new food guru, Manjula Jain, on her web site, Manjula's Kitchen. I know I said that my first thing to make was going to be naan (an Indian flat bread), but after the baking-stone debacle, which arrived broken in pieces, I had to send it back and have not found a new one yet. I'm thinking that maybe I don't need a baking stone for the naan. I will have to research that. Maybe I could put a large baking sheet in the oven and let it get really hot and then put the naan dough on that... not sure.

But back to the spinach pasta dish above. It was very good. My only complaint with it as written (and cooked) is that it is a tad too hot-spicy for my palate. I do like spice, but there is 1/8th teaspoon of red pepper flakes in this dish, and I think that, in future, I might either omit that ingredient altogether or else only put a very few flakes in and not a eighth of a teaspoonful. Paul commented that he liked it a lot and that we could have it "tomorrow again" (which is tonight) for supper. So that's one thing I can check off to prepare for supper tonight. Reheat and serve. That's what I like. Manjula, I think, said it serves 2-3 in her video, but my recipe came up with enough to serve 4-6 really. That's OK. We like leftovers!

Somehow, I ended up with a subscription to Bon Appetit magazine. I don't remember ordering or paying for this magazine, but it comes to me every month in the post. It has some really good looking recipes in it. I found a couple I am definitely going to try, one is "Lemon Spiced Rice" and the other, which I'm thinking of trying tonight to go with the leftover spinach pasta (and some small Italian sausage links) is called "Spiced Carrots". There is an ingredient in this dish called "ras-el-halout" (which means "head of the shop" and is a "complex North African spice mixture that imparts a blend of aromatic spicy and earthy flavors.") Not sure what that could be, but I am off now to google it. (Found it here at Wikipedia.) Very interesting. I'm hoping I can substitute something else in my extensive spice pantry for this thing (it does say "optional" in the recipe). There is also "curry" in here, and I do love anything tasting of curry.

Well, that's all folks, for now. I hope Paul will be pleased with tonight's fare. Just preparing the spiced carrots and reheating the spinach pasta and sausage links seems do-able for me. I'll be back with a report on how things turned out.

Cheers,

Bex & Co.

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"Life is not a continuum of pleasant choices, but of inevitable problems that call for strength, determination, and hard work."

[Indian Proverb]