spinach-artichoke-yogurt pasta sauce with pesto

[cimorene]

I went into the kitchen and heated a skillet of olive oil to make my favorite nearly-instant mushroom pasta meal only to discover we were out of mushrooms! I had to produce some kind of pasta sauce, and I was highly apprehensive about its experimental nature, but it turned out tasty, actually.


For two people,

olive oil
garlic
basil
frozen spinach
1 jar artichokes in brine
about 2 dL yogurt
a few teaspoons of pesto

1. Heat olive oil on medium high (and saute fresh garlic, or else add garlic powder with the first ingredients), then add frozen spinach when hot. Stir, and add about a teaspoon of basil when it starts to sizzle. Cover, and cook a few minutes, until spinach is thawed.

2. Drain and rinse artichokes. Chop finely. Add to the spinach once it is thawed. Add more olive oil if it's starting to dry out and stir well. Cover and cook another five minutes or so, until artichokes are cooked.

3. Turn off the heat and add a few teaspoons of pesto paste and again, more oil but only if it's too dry. Then add the yogurt and stir thoroughly. If sauce is thick, thin with water, but don't use too much.

Comments

[alexseanchai]

Artichokes make me recoil in horror, but Mom has this spinach-artichoke dip recipe she adores and she likes pesto. *forwards link*

[cimorene]

I love that recipe too! At least, it may not be quite the same one, but it's probably similar. This one's not nearly as rich though, since it's not packed with cheeses.

[alexseanchai]

I...don't think there's cheese in Mom's? There's white goo, which might be cream cheese, but I'm fairly certain there's no cheese cheese. Damned if I know where she hides the recipe, though, we have cookbooks from ceiling to floor plus two boxes of family recipe index cards plus stacks and stacks of Internet printouts...

[cimorene]

Huh. Well, my recipe has cheeses in it, but the amount of shredded cheese you add is flexible - it's still very tasty without. The base is cream cheese and/or sour cream, and there's about three kinds of shredded cheeses mixed into it. They sort of blend in once it's baked, but depending on the amount, it can get kind of stringy. At the higher cheese-content end, you couldn't mistake the cheesiness, but perhaps at the lower end it could just blend in, I suppose.