Goat Cheese White Sauce Pasta

This rich and creamy pasta dish is a fun and easy to make recipe that will make any dabling cook feel like a top chef.

Ingredients

You will need to gather

1 box of you choice, we recommend campanelle since they hold sauce well
4 quarts of water
2 tablespoons of salt
5 oz of goat cheese or 1/2 of cup
5 tablespoons olive oil
black pepper to taste
3/4 cup of diced red bell pepper
6 cups of spinach
1/2 cup of diced cherry tomatoes

Boil Noodles

Add salt to 4 quarts of water and bring to a boil. Cook the pasta you chose until they are al dente. Before straining the pasta save 3/4 of a cup of the pasta water that now has some starch in it. The salty, starchy water will be used to make the sauce by melting the goat cheese. The sauce mixture can be prepped while the noodles are cooking.

Preparing the Sauce

Mix together goat cheese and olive oil in medium sized bowl. Add black pepper if desired. Once noodles are cooked take the strachy water as explained before and add it to the bowl. Mix all the ingredients together to create the white sauce.

Prepare Red Bell Pepper and Spinach

While water is boiling dice red bell pepper and sauté in cast iron pan, also sauté the spinach. To sauté put cast iron pan over medium high heat and add some olive oil, cook peppers for 3-5 minutes and spinach until it wilts. Cooked wilted spinach can been seen in photo.

Combine!

After straining noodles return them to the pot, add white sauce, sautéed peppers and spinach and fresh diced tomatoes. Mix it all together!

Plate

Put pasta on plate, garnish with crumbles of goat cheese and salted pretzels for a little extra crunch if desired. This dish is great hot and makes a good pasta salad for lunch the next day if leftovers are refrigerated.