Mar 09, 2020
How to Make Ricotta Pasta
First choose a pasta you like. I like a flat pasta you can twirl, like fettuccine, linguine or tagliatelle (which is pictured). Then choose your greens:
I use kale, spinach and broccoli rabe but you can use any greens you like, such as beet greens, swiss chard (aka silverbeet), broccoli, and/or bags of frozen mixed greens. Keep it to 1 lb of leafy greens or 8 oz leafy greens plus 1 lb of something sturdier like peas, broccolini, broccoli, or broccoli rabe. If you choose a frozen option, that’s easy and perfect, just pop them in the cooking water in the last few minutes of cooking the pasta, drain with the pasta, and add both to the simple ricotta sauce together in the same step.
For the nights when you’re craving a healthy vegetarian dinner that’s still super satisfying, look no further. This recipe has three times more green vegetables than it has pasta, and the simple creamy ricotta pasta sauce has lots of protein and not actual cream. You could even double the spinach and/or kale and dial back the pasta even more and it would still be super satisfying. I love a dinner crammed with greens. This is a creamy pasta you can feel really good about.
Simple Ricotta Sauce Ingredients
The ricotta has a sweet, milky flavour and creamy texture with tiny curds. I amp it up in this recipe with fried garlic and chili flakes, which stand up to the bitterness of the greens and add a flavour pow to a mild cream sauce. Saving pasta water is key as the salt and starch it contains make it an actual ingredient, it’s not substitutable with plain water.
Olive oil Garlic Crushed chili flakes Ricotta Salt Reserved pasta water
How to Make Ricotta Pasta Sauce
After draining the pasta into a colander, return the same pot to the stove. Add olive oil, garlic and chili flakes. When garlic softens and smells fragrant, stir in the kale and/or spinach and cook until just wilted. Stir in ricotta, salt and ½ cup of the reserved pasta water.
If you want to make this ricotta pasta more palatable to kids, finely chop spinach (milder flavour) in a food processor in place of the kale and swap broccoli in place of the broccoli rabe. OR you can also simply swap in peas instead of kale and omit the broccoli rabe.
