The Food Connoisseur | my life//in medias res*

Raidin’ The Pantry: Beef Florentine Pasta

February 16th, 2008 at 1:22 am by sillyjoe (The Food Connoisseur)

Even though I cook for a living, I’ve never done it a lot at home (probably because I do it for a living) until recently. I’ve been cooking stuff at home a ton recently, mostly because I realized I was eating ENTIRELY too much fast food, and that I could cook for myself a heck of a lot cheaper. Anyway, I really enjoy reading Scott’s kitchen escapades, so I thought I’d post a bit about mine from time to time. A couple of days ago mom made some Cabbage Beef Soup for a church thing, and there was about a half pound or so, maybe a little more, ground beef left. If it didn’t get cooked today, it was going to have to be thrown out, so I thought I’d go look in the pantry and see what I could work up…this was the result.

Beef Florentine Pasta:

approx. 1/2 lb ground beef
1 box (1 lb) penne pasta
1 package (approx. 10 oz. or so) frozen cut spinach
1 jar Bertolli Alfredo sauce
kosher salt

I thawed the spinach out by taking it out of the bag, and putting it in a colander under cold running water. In five minutes or so, it was thawed out without getting all nasty and smelly. I squeezed as much water as possible out of the spinach and put it in a prep bowl to dry. I boiled a gallon of water with a big handful of kosher salt in a pot, then added the penne. I browned the ground beef, and put the Alfredo in a sauce-pan to warm. Once the beef was brown and the Alfredo was hot I added the beef and the spinach to the alfredo and mixed thoroughly. When the penne was done (approx. 10 minutes to al dente) I poured it out into a colander, then put the pasta back into the pot. Added the beef/Alfredo/spinach mixture to the penne, stirred it up and had some deliciousness.

Here’s the result.

delish