Monday's risky pasta

As I had a band rehearsal to get to, a late finish at work meant that my preference for tea was reheat soup. Matt, my husband had other ideas and made it quite clear that he wanted pasta. I was up to the challenge. 

Since it had been such a glorious weekend, we were particularly devoid of fresh ingredients - grocery shopping is not, in my opinion, an appropriate activity in such fine climes. But I was optimistic that I could concoct something from the available ingredients: 

• some cherry tomatoes (brought for a picnic but then forgotten in favour of naughtier things) 
• a bag of baby spinach (not quite a fortnight past its use by date) 
• a bit of blue cheese (when I came to it a bit less than I had anticipated - I think that someone might have had some for lunch). 

I would make a variation on one of my favourite student pasta sauces of broccoli, Stilton and lemon. 

I began by frying an onion. Even this was the last useable onion in the house - I have to return one to the shop as it was gone off in that way that onions do but that you can't tell until you start chopping. Onion doesn't feature in the original student recipe but it seemed like a sensible thing to do tonight. When this was nice and soft I added the spinach. Based on its use by date this was in remarkably good condition, you have to be a bit suspicious about what they do to it to make it last so long. Hopefully I'll be able to start using spinach from our hanging basket soon, or maybe even chard if I'm feeling fancy. At the same time I added a dozen or so cherry tomatoes. 

Whilst the veggies were cooking I set about the pasta. We have a large choice of different pastas and today I opted for the "fun" pasta from my favourite garden centre. This is because I was not certain of the success of the sauce and, should it be less than delicious, fun pasta might at least distract. When the veggies looked like they were done (spinach a tiny proportion of its original volume and cherry tomatoes exploded) I stirred in the blue cheese. This didn't look like quite enough dairy so I augmented it with a dollop of cream cheese. Finished off with a good grind of black pepper. Unfortunately I forgot that you shouldn't pick up the pepper mill from the top and as well as the good grind I ended up with peppercorns scattered around the hob. 

It culminated in one of those happy coincidences where the pasta and the sauce are ready at just the same time. Furthermore, it was one of those happy coincidences where the things that you throw together from the fridge actually end up tasting pretty good.

And I don't think that it was just because we were distracted by the fun pasta. (I did identify a star, an apple and a bow shape, but these are nothing in comparison to the sphinx that Matt found). 

I'd been a bit excessive with the fun pasta, so one of us will be having even more fun tomorrow lunchtime.