Tomato & Spinach Pasta Toss

Tomato & Spinach Pasta Toss

2 cups rotini or penne pasta, uncooked
1/2 lb. hot or mild Italian sausage
6 oz. baby spinach leaves (7 cups)
1 can diced tomatoes with basil, garlic, and oregano, undrained
1 cup Kraft Shredded Low-Moisture Part-Skim Mozzarella Cheese
2 Tbsp Kraft 100% Grated Parmesan Cheese

1. Cook pasta as directed on package.
2. Meanwhile, crumble meat into large deep skillet. Cook on medium-high heat 10 to 12 minutes or until cooked through, stirring occasionally; drain. Add spinach and tomatoes; cook 2 minutes or until spinach is wilted, stirring occasionally. Remove fron heat; cover to keep warm.
3. Drain pasta; return to pot. Add meat mixture and cheeses; toss lightly.

Makes 6 servings.

This is a recipe from the Spring 2008 edition of Food & Family from Kraftfoods. The magazine is obviously meant to be one big advertisement for their products but if you need a quick and simple recipe, it will definitely do the trick. Here is a recipe that combines a lot of my favorite foods so I was excited to try it.

The ingredients:

I couldn't find anything but the links version of Italian sausage so I used them and just removed the meat from their casings. I'm sure you could just cook the links and then cut them up for this recipe but it takes just a bit longer to cook them that way and I was in a hurry.

It's always fun to cook down fresh spinach. Luckily I thought ahead this time and used my biggest skillet so I had plenty of room for all this spinach. I'm not sure exactly how much spinach I actually used as I had a 10 oz pack and wasn't really feeling like measuring things.

Here is the cooked down spinach/tomato/meat mixture. It smelled really good.

I had some time to kill before the pasta was done so I covered the meat mixture so it wouldn't get cold before putting it all together. Looking back now I see that the recipe even includes this step which makes feel a little bit better since I just thought I had planned poorly.

The cooked pasta, meat mixture and cheeses ready to be mixed.

The final product: this meal is super simple and very good. I like everything about this meal: the spinach, cheese, meat, tomatoes; it's all good. The only bad thing about this meal is the clean up as the cheese is super stringy and sticky. Next time I think I won't break the meat up as much because I like larger chunks.