Skip to main content

Macaroni in Spinach Sauce


This isn't your standard macaroni and cheese. It's a lot better. And since this comes from someone like me who doesn't even like casseroles, you should start thinking about making this for dinner even while you read the recipe.

First, boil half a cup of macaroni in salted water until just cooked. Slice 5-6 mushrooms thinly. Heat a tsp of olive oil in a pan. Add mushrooms and stir fry until they looked cooked. Add macaroni, salt and crushed pepper. Mix well, then arrange in a baking dish.

Now our second layer, the spinach sauce. Start with a small bunch of spinach. Discard any thick stems and spotted/damaged leaves, then pour boiling water to cover the spinach. Blanch for a few seconds, drain and make a fine puree. This should give you around 3/4 cup. Seperately, mix a cup of milk with a tbsp of cornflour.

Heat a tsp of olive oil. Add spinach puree and cook until it starts to look a little dry. Then add the milk/cornflour mix and cook, stirring continuously, until the sauce turns thick. Add salt and pepper to taste. Remember your macaroni's already seasoned so go a little easy here. Pour the sauce over your macaroni.

Heat the oven to 180C. Top your macaroni and spinach with breadcrumbs and bake for 10 minutes. Take it out of the oven (very carefully!) and sprinkle some grated parmesan, then put it back and bake until browned on top.

Comments

Raaga said…
I have a slightly different version of this: http://chefatwork.blogspot.com/2008/11/penne-in-corn-spinach-sauce.html

Casseroles will start appearing more and more when I feel less and less like cooking!
Lebouffe said…
This is yumm.. Got some awards to share with you. Do pick them up from http://le-bouffe.blogspot.com/2010/02/more-awards.html
TNL said…
your recipes are always worth trying...this is one I will make for sure. Its a good one for the weekend.

thanks.
trupti
the spice who loved me
ruchikacooks said…
the crusty top on pasta is my fav part..looks yum.
Anonymous said…
Looks dreamy, I think this was the pasta you were tweeting about and now I can see why!

Popular posts from this blog

I've found my perfect cookie

It's a bite sized cookie, with flavors of a pie, shape of a croissant and a pretty, pretty name. It's Rugelach. I first heard of this cookie when it became the baking pick for Tuesdays with Dorrie a couple of months back. The looks, the concept - everything was fascinating. And I've dreamed of making this cookie ever since. I ditched hundreds of recipes floating around and went straight to the master. It's Dorie Greenspan's recipe that I used, and ain't I glad I got it so perfect the very first time. So what's rugelach? It's cream-cheese pastry dough, rolled then cut into wedges, spread with jam and sugar and fillings of choice, rolled into crescents and baked. First the dough. Dorie did it in her processor, but I just went and did it by hand. Put 100 gms cream cheese and 100 gms butter out of the fridge until they were soft but still cold. Added both to a cup of plain flour (I omitted the salt because I use salted butter). Rubbed the flour and but...

Mystery Fruit

This only happened a few times every year, just when the rainy season kicked in. A street hawker will come by, straw basket on head. He will yell "kaul chapni" and I will run out to buy a bundle of these. Stuck together like flowers, they looked like a bouquet. Every hole contains a little fruit. You break out the package, peel the tiny fruit that pops out and eat it. Done slowly, it can take you an hour to eat an head. Or did, when I was about 12 years old. That was the last time I saw this fruit. I've never seen it again, didn't even know what it was called or where it came from. Three weeks back, Vikram Doctor wrote about a store in Khar that sells Sindhi foods. He described this fruit and I knew it came from my vivid childhood memories. And finally, I knew we were talking about lotus fruit. Now talk about coincidences. Last weekend, I was passing by a lane in Bandra and for the first time in many, many years I saw the straw basket filled with my mytery fru...

Of Brun and Bun Maska

There is more to Bombay's breads than the pao that goes into pao bhaji and vada pao. There's Brun. and there's bun. We will get there. First, you have to get to know the city's Parsis. And Iranis, who are also Zoroastrians, but came to city a little later, in the late 19th or early 20th century. And when they came, they brought with them these little cafes that dot the city. I am no expert on Irani chai cafes. And I can't tell you whether Yazdani Bakery will provide you the best experience or Kyani's. But I can tell you a few things you need to ignore when you get there. Appearances don't matter; so ignore the fact that the marble/glass top tables and the wooden chairs look a bit dilapidated. Also ignore the rundown look the place sports. Instead, get yourself settled. And order a bun muska. This one's familiar to you as a first cousin of the soft hamburger bun. It's similar, but just a tad bit sweeter. Maska, of course, is the generous dollop o...