Pasta with spinach, scallions, lemon, dill, parsley, & feta

[kenboy.livejournal.com]

This was one of those don't-want-to-go-to-the-store what-can-I-make-with-what's-on-hand dinners; I think it worked out pretty well for a completely spur-of-the-moment thing.

It's really quick, too; you can put it all together while the pasta cooks.

So, you'll need something along these lines, obviously flexible as hell:

Olive oil
Butter
A bunch of scallions
Some spinach (I used the last third of a bag of fresh spinach; I think it would have been fine with a bit more, or a package of frozen.)
Half a lemon
1/4 cup or so of fresh dill
1/8 cup or so of fresh parsley
3/4 to a whole block of feta, crumbled or cut up, whatever.
Pasta (I used fettuccine, and I think that was a great choice.)

So, boil some water and put your pasta in it. While it's cooking, put a decent amount of olive oil in a skillet -- I think I used about 1/4 cup -- and melt about two tablespoons of butter in it, over medium high heat. Chop your scallions and dump them in. Once they've sizzled a bit, drop in the spinach, it'll wilt pretty quickly, and you can drop the heat back a ways once it has. Add a little salt, if you want, but not too much -- the feta will fill your salty needs later.

Chop and add your herbs as the pasta continues to cook. When the pasta is done, drain it, saving some of the water it cooked in. Dump the pasta back in its pot and add the contents of your skillet; dump in the juice of about half a lemon and your feta; add around 1/2 cup of the pasta water, and toss/mix it all around.

(When I made it, I added the lemon after the spinach; it all turned a little brown. No idea what that was all about, maybe some weird reaction with my pan? Anyway, that's why I'm suggesting the lemon go in at the end.)

That's it. Enjoy.