Out of habit, I make a lot of pasta.  I have made hundreds of variations of this dish, with some sort of ground meat or sausage, some variation on vegetables, and sauce.  Come to think of it, I could pretty easily write an entire cookbook full of them, changing the ingredients to accommodate the changes in season and mood.  This particular version, however, was special.  In my world, no dish exists that is more delicious and comfortable.  It has a few really fresh and high quality ingredients, none of which are expensive, and it could satisfy even the most insatiable crowd.

I would serve this to my friends on a Tuesday night, but I would not be ashamed to serve it to my mother on a Sunday. I never really feel the need to serve it with any accompanying side dishes because it is packed with veggies and served over spaghetti, and there is nothing that brings people together better than a family sized bowl of pasta in the middle of the dinner table. I also love to entertain with a dish like this because it only takes about 40 minutes to prepare and there are plenty of things for guests to help chop.

One thing that makes this particular pasta unique is the flavor the sauce gets from the vodka.  If you have never tried a vodka sauce before, it is awesome.  The flavor is more subtle than you would think, but it is sharper and cleaner than the flavor you get from using wine.  I was first turned on to the idea of using vodka when I had the linguini arabiata at a great little place in East Bay Area in California called La Piazza.  This family oriented Italian restaurant has an open kitchen with a few  bar stools to watch the action, so I was able to pick up some ideas for recreating this dish myself.  The nice thing about preparing it at home was that I could use whatever vegetables and meat I chose, and I was able to substitute the heavy cream for the yummy sheep’s milk feta, an option I felt a little better about.

View the recipe below as a cooking method rather than specific dish, although these ingredients do work together quite harmoniously.  I often search the fridge, inventory the fresh produce and protein on hand, and piece together a meal spontaneously.  So if you happen to have kale instead of spinach or chicken sausages rather than ground pork, you can absolutely make this happen.  My last bit of advice on this dish is to make twice as much as you think you will need for that night…it’s even better left over.

Ingredients:

• 1 pound ground pork
• 1 large yellow onion, julienned
• 4 cloves of garlic, finely chopped

• 1 fennel bulb, thinly sliced, with 3 tablespoons of the fronds chopped and reserved for garnish
• 1 large bunch of fresh spinach, cleaned and roughly chopped
• 12 oz. of feta cheese (I used sheep’s milk feta)
• 1 cup vodka
• 1 large can of San Marzano tomatoes
• 1 large can of tomato sauce
• 1/4 cup of pine nuts
• 3 tablespoons olive oil
• 1 package of spaghetti (I used whole wheat), cooked al dente
• Salt and red pepper flakes to taste

Heat the olive oil in large, deep skillet over medium heat.  Add the onions and fennel and cook until they begin to become translucent.  Add the garlic, pine nuts,  and red pepper flakes.  Season the pork with salt and pepper and add to the pan, allowing the meat to brown before you turn it.  When the second side is cooking, break the pork into bite site bits with the back of a wooden spoon.

When the pork is browned on both sides, add the vodka and allow the alcohol to cook off for about five minutes.  Add the tomatoes and the tomato sauce and reduce the heat to low.  Stir in the chopped spinach. Break up the feta over the sauce and slowly stir it in to the sauce.  Stir in the reserved fennel fronds.  Add the cooked spaghetti to the skillet, and toss well all together.  Serves four with leftovers!

Saag is one of the items on the Indian menu that I enjoy immensely.  It’s usually something that gets me out to Indian restaurants, along with Bhurta (eggplant), and Chicken Tikka Masala.  Typically, it’s served with paneer, the Indian cheese that resembles the taste of ricotta with the texture more like feta.  Chicken saag is delicious too, and perhaps easier to make at home.  Making homemade paneer is quite simple to make as well, only taking some milk and acid like lemon juice or vinegar.  I would’ve made paneer tonight, but it takes some time for the cheese to set, so that’s going to have to wait for another post.

The dish is popular in northern India and Pakistan, especially in the Punjab province.  I always thought the dish was all spinach, but I was surprised to learn that most saag is made with different types of greens, usually involving mustard greens.  It could easily include chard, collards or beet greens, but I think including spinach is key.

Another very cool thing about cooking with Indian flavors is (of course) the spices.  I use a combination of Turmeric, Coriander, Cayenne and Garam Masala (which is a traditional combination of many spices like cumin, bay leaf, pepper, mace, allspice, star anise, etc…).  So finding some excellent looking spinach at the farmer’s market earlier in the day, I decided to make this dish happen.  Here’s how it went down:

• 1 large bunch of spinach and/or other greens like mustard greens, beet greens or turnip greens.  Any dark green works – chopped roughly (chopped finely if you don’t have a food processor)
• 1 large yellow onion – chopped (reserve 1/3 cup if you want to make onion chutney)
• 6 cloves garlic – peeled and diced
• A knob of ginger – peeled and diced
• 2 skinless, boneless chicken breasts
• 1/2 cup plain yogurt

• 2 Tbsp. cream (optional and adjust as you like)
• 2 tsp. coriander
• 1 tsp. turmeric
• 1 tsp. cayenne pepper (adjust this based upon your tolerance for heat)
• 1 tsp. garam masala
• 2 tsp. salt
• olive oil or ghee
• 1/2 – 3/4 cup water

Start the rice before you do anything else.  I like to use jasmine or basmati rice for Indian dishes.  You want to rinse the rice a bit first in a colander or cheesecloth, then put it into a heavy bottomed pot and top it with enough water to cover the rice about an inch.  Bring to a boil, then turn the burner to low, cover the pot and simmer until the water has cooked off – about 20 minutes.

Meanwhile, in a large pan or dutch oven over medium heat, add the oil or ghee and your onion and sweat the onion until it’s translucent.

Next add in the garlic and ginger and continue to cook for another few minutes until it’s sweated out a bit too.  Next add the spices: salt, turmeric, cayenne and coriander.  Stir the mix together and continue to cook over medium-low heat.

At this point, you should cook your chicken.  I like to cube my chicken for this dish before hand, and cook it in a separate pan, then add it to the saag to finish cooking.  Simply cube the chicken into 1-2 inch cubes and season them all over with salt and pepper.  In another pan, cook them over medium heat, browning them, but not cooking them totally through.  Remove from the pan and set aside.

Add in the spinach and a bit of the water and cook until most of the water has cooked off and the spinach is nicely wilted.  At this point, if yu have a food processor, transfer the mixture to the machine and give it a few spins.  You don’t want this to be totally pureed!  I like my saag to still retain some consistency and not to just feel like baby food.

When you’re happy with the puree, transfer the saag back to the pot and set it over low heat.  Add the chicken back to the pot with the spinach mixture and add the yogurt.  Mix to combine and let the mixture cook together for at least 10 minutes.  When the chicken is totally cooked through, add in the cream and serve over some rice, that’s it! Serve with onion chutney:

• Reserved 1/3 cup diced onion
• 1 Tbsp. cider vinegar
• 1 tsp. tomato paste
• 2 tsp. sugar (adjust to taste)

Simply mix ingredients together in a small bowl and serve over the saag and rice (or anything else of your liking).