Recipe 15 - Super Green Spaghetti

Welcome to the era of pasta! This marks our first Fun fact: I love ricotta cheese and don’t eat it as often as I would like (like so many of the ingredients Jamie uses). I’ve never worked with or even ate black kale so before even cooking this, I was dying to eat it!

The Shopping Experience

Black kale, also known as cavolo nero, black cabbage, and Italian Kale, was surprisingly easy to find! Two out of three of my regular grocery stores carried it. It was only sold in pretty big bundles though so I even up buying much more than I needed. But honestly, that’s fine because an excuse to eat more leafy greens is always a good thing.

I made a few substitutes to this recipe for the sake of penny-pinching. I used the same pre-shredded Parmigiano Reggiano cheese as the last salad recipe and continued using the pre-minced garlic I’ve been using for a while now. Nothing crazy, just something thrifty. 

The Cooking Experience 

The whole cooking experience felt pretty quick which I am taking as a good sign for the pasta chapter. Although, that could also just be leading me into a sense of false security as the pasta recipes get harder. But we’ll have to wait and see about that.  

The recipe says to tear the kale and wilt by boiling them and then fish them out of the water to blend them up. I tore them pretty small thinking it would help them blend later on but I actually ended up making them so small that fishing them out was way harder than I planned.

Also, the recipe suggests using a blender but I used a food processor because my blender is an actual piece of garbage. It makes tons of noise and can barely blend a watery smoothie so there was no way I was going to trust it to blend damp kale.

My kale didn’t turn out as green or as finely blended as the picture in the cookbook. Jamie’s green spaghetti looked like it was cloaked in a thin green sauce but you can definitely see little specks of kale all over my pasta. That’s ok though, it’ll still taste good!

The Eating Experience

This was preeeetty good! I say it’s just “pretty good” because, while it is really cool to look at (a plate of green pasta is pretty unique, right?), I don’t think it’s a dish I’ll be craving anytime soon. Kale is the dominant flavour, which means, even though there are added cheeses, the dish gets pretty monotonous by the time you’re halfway through. 

With the criticism out of the way, let’s get onto the positives! The pasta was very buttery tasting despite having no butter. I’m assuming it’s a result of the nuttiness of the kale mixing with the fresh creaminess of the ricotta. Since there is no meat component, the overall dish is very light tasting so you won’t be bogged down or too full after eating it. But caution, you might feel hungry afterwards instead!

Final Thoughts

The inaugural pasta recipe turned out really well; tasty and easy, just like the cookbook promises! As I mentioned in my Final Thoughts on Salads post, I’m really excited to continue cooking (and more importantly, EATING) the rest of the pasta recipes. This simple one is a great way to start off on the right foot. Although I don’t think I’ll be returning to it, I did like it and I’m also glad I now have a big bunch of kale and a container of ricotta to eat.

Total estimated cook time: 13 min

Total actual cook time: 45 min (honestly, I have no idea what took me so long to cook this... I'm going to blame it on getting distracted with something else.