Resuming normality

It's been a long, tiring week: broken nights and anxious days had me too exhausted to even think of doing any Edmonds cooking. But a diet of fast food and hastily thrown-together meals was not exactly helpful to my energy levels, and I decided it was about time I started cooking proper meals again.

With this in mind, I briefly consulted my Edmonds book before I left work last night. I knew I wouldn't have the energy to cook anything complicated, and quickly chose a recipe that would be quick and simple to make: spinach and bacon with pasta (p103).

When I got home (having dropped by Raeward for spinach on the way) I collapsed onto the couch for a while, watching Masterchef and some of the news before willing myself into the kitchen at the onset of the sports coverage.

The recipe is quite basic: fry onion, garlic and bacon, then add spinach and cook until it's dark green and wilted, then serve over pasta. I recommend washing and chopping the spinach before you begin; I attempted to do this while the onion etc was cooking, but it took longer than I thought. My onions were a bit brown by the time  the spinach was ready to add.

Apart from this, the meal was very quick and easy to make. It seemed a little odd to have pasta with just the spinach and bacon mixture stirred through it  - I'm used to pasta drowning in sauce of one kind or another, in the usual Kiwi fashion, but I understand that pasta in this style is not unusual in Italy.

I wasn't too impressed with my first taste of the pasta. It seemed a bit bland, but as I made my way dilligently through the plateful, I found that the bacony, garlicy juices from the pan had coated the pasta, and the dish was n fact quite tasty. It's only a pity that there weren't enough juices to coat all the pasta.

Since I hadn't made the full recipe, working around a single bunch of spinach rather than the 2-3 specified, I may not have had the proportions quite right. The 2 rashers of bacon I used were also quite small (especially once all the fat was trimmed off). I think using a third rasher of bacon, and a larger onion, would have given quite a lot more flavour to the dish.

I think I will make this again, perhaps with the slight alterations mentioned above. It's very quick and easy, and far better for me than any greasy takeaways I might resort to when I'm feeling too tired or unmotivated to spend much time in the kitchen.