Oh! Crap! The Spinach! aka Spinach Pasta Salad

I always manage to forget some vegatable in the bottom of my fridge. This time, it happened to be the spinach. It was on the verge of going the way of all old veggies, when I decided to put it to good use. With that in mind I set about to create a delightful meal with what I had in my fridge. Behold:

1 T olive oil
2 med-small scallions - thinly sliced
1 small leek - sliced
1 cup mixed nuts - chopped
1 clove garlic - minced
dried rosemary
dried thyme
salt
pepper
1/4 cup cooking marsala

rigatoni for 2-4

1 bunch spinach - raw, washed - ripped into bite sized pieces
1 cup crumbled cheese of choice (optional)

Prepare pasta in usual fashion. Remove from heat. Drain.

saute thescallionss, leek, and garlic in olive oil. Add chopped nuts, spices (crush spices as you add them to bring out the flavor), and marsala and cook a little longer until nuts are browning and marsala is mostly evaporated. Remove from heat.

At this point you really have two options, depending on how you feel about cooked spinach. I hate cooked spinach. There are few foods in the world that I love one way and hate another. Spinach happens to be one of them.

Variations:
1. For a hot pasta salad combine spinach and the sauted vegetables in a bowl. Mix well — being careful to not bruise the spinach. Combine that into the pasta. Serve immediately.

2. For a cold salad allow all ingredients to cool, then combine as described in variation 1.

Both variations keep well over night and are quite tasty the next day — hot or cold.