I’ve made spinach pesto for you before. So, this recipe may seem oddly redundant, but changing the cheese changes so much that this version has a flavor all of it’s own that is distinctly different from the original.
See I was lazy the other night about planning dinner and realized as I was about to put the kids in the bathtub that I had nothing planned or shopped for. I was tempted to just order in, but the prospect of forking out money for take-out is getting less and less appealing to me. I texted Adam and asked if he’d be alright with me just experimenting with a random combination of stuff over some pasta. Being the good sport that he is, he said, “Go for it!”
I started with a bag of unopened spinach that was in the fridge and I started scavenging. Little bit of left over feta? In. Five lonely olives? In. One lone tomato? In. Dregs from the bottom of the heavy cream container? In. The last of the bag of toasted pine nuts? In. Two forgotten scallions in the crisper? In. I mean all of these ingredients are delicious, no? How could the outcome not work?
While that kind of logic certainly doesn’t always work, it did it’s job with this meal. The tang from the feta made a nice change from the Parmesan we usually see in this dish and the olives lent a saltiness that balanced out the juicy water from the tomato. The pine nuts added a robust earthiness that brought out the sharpness of the scallions and complimented the softness of the baby spinach. It might just be worth buying the ingredients just for this dish next time!
Can this be done with a substitute for the heavy cream?
You could just skip the heavy cream altogether. That’s the beauty of this kind of cooking; you can adapt it to whatever your needs, resources, or inclinations are!