A Month-of-Mediterranean: Goat Cheese Pasta with Spinach and Artichokes

Two Peas & Their Pod Cookbook is the origin of this interesting recipe. Just the title of it makes you feel healthier, right? And didn’t your saliva glands respond as well?

I made this as written, except I used sea salt instead of kosher salt, and so I’ll share it with you. If you don’t have the cookbook, and want to see the original, you can go to the Pure Wow site to find Goat Cheese Pasta with Spinach and Artichokes. It’s a simple, 30-minute recipe with most ingredients you likely already have. I only made a few changes to the original.

We eat a lot of different kinds of pasta, and I encourage you to branch out from spaghetti and elbow macaroni if you haven’t already done so. Different pastas were created for specific qualities such as a wide flat surface for the sauce to adhere to, stuffed pastas, tubes to stuff, or shells to hide the sauce inside and out. There are also pastas specifically made for soups and specialty shapes for specific dishes.

Read up on pastas to see which ones suit your particular purpose in a dish. As a general principle, thinner sauces go better thin pastas and thicker sauces go better with thicker pastas. The pasta in this recipe, orecchiette, is a small shell-shape.

Goat Cheese Pasta with Spinach and Artichokes (serves 4)

Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper

8 ounces dried orecchiette (or your favorite short pasta)

2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil

2 tablespoons minced shallot

4 garlic cloves, minced

¼ teaspoon crushed red-pepper flakes

Grated zest of 1 lemon

6 cups packed fresh spinach leaves

One 14-ounce can quartered artichoke hearts, drained

5 ounces (1 small log) goat cheese

2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice (from 1 large lemon)

3 tablespoons chopped fresh basil, optional, for garnish

Bring a large pot of water to a boil. Reduce the amount of water to cover the pasta about an inch above. [See NOTE] 

Generously salt the water and cook the pasta according to the package directions until al dente. Reserve ½ cup of the cooking water and drain the pasta. Set aside.

Heat the olive oil in a large skillet over medium-high heat. Add the shallot and garlic; cook until fragrant, about 2 minutes. 

Add the pepper flakes and zest along with the spinach. Cook until the spinach wilts, about 3 minutes. Stir in the artichoke hearts.

Add the pasta to the spinach and artichoke mixture. Crumble the goat cheese over the top and stir in the lemon juice along with ¼ cup of the reserved pasta water. 

Continue stirring until a creamy sauce coats the pasta. If the pasta isn’t creamy enough, add additional pasta water. Season with salt and pepper to taste and garnish with fresh basil. Serve with a salad and garlic bread. 

NOTE: When a recipe calls for adding pasta water to help make the sauce, cook the pasta in less water than usual. That way the pasta water has a lot more starch in it which helps the formation of a creamier sauce.

DH’s Rating: 4 Tongues Up

While it was cooking: “It smells good. What’s in it?” After he’d eaten dinner: “This was good. Different. But it would be even better with a little chicken.”

It was a different flavor profile. I cook a lot with cheeses, but I don’t use goat or feta cheese much, so we noticed the difference.