Pasta with Salami, Peas, and Spinach

I thought I’d start with one of my favorite recipes – one that I’ve made on a pretty regular basis for over a year now. It originated form Food52’s Orecchiette with Crispy Salami, Peas + Dandelion Greens recipe. It’s been adapted based off of practical reasons. First, while I would love to be the kind of person who uses dandelion greens are on a regular basis, I’m not even sure where I could find them, so that became spinach. Second, I use whatever small pasta I have at the time. In this particular case, I didn’t have any so I used fettuccinie. Orecchiette is preferred (by me at least) because the peas fit perfectly into the little dip.

I like this recipe because it doesn’t use a lot of meat, but while cooking the salami some of the fat is reduced that’s then incorporated into a sauce or sorts making the pasta taste like there’s more meat in it. This recipe calls for 6 ounces of salami and makes enough for 4 meals (for us, two dinners and two lunches). Anyway, below is what I’ve adapted the recipe to.

Ingredients

• Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
• 12 ounces small pasta
• 1 tablespoon olive oil (I sometimes use truffle oil)
• 6 ounces salami, quartered and thinly sliced
• 3 cloves garlic, diced
• 1 cup frozen peas
• 4 bunches spinach (roughly 3 cups, or 1.5 cups frozen spinach)

Instructions

1. Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil. Cook pasta according to package directions for al dente.
2. Meanwhile, heat oil in a large skillet over medium-high. Add salami and cook. After a minute add in garlic. Cook stirring, until salami is crisp, 2 minutes.
3. After three minutes (total), stir in spinach and peas. Once the spinach has wilted, add the cooked pasta.
4. Season with salt.

Here’s a picture of the salami