I was cruising round the Abel & Cole recipe pages last night and came across a recipe using dark greens in a pasta sauce. I had a head of spring greens I wanted to use, so that was my lunch sorted for today. Abel& Cole are a great source for inspiration. A word of caution mind, they change their recipes and what is there today, may not be tomorrow. So cut and paste it or print it out if you find something you like.

Spring green pasta sauce with parmesan

half a pack of spring greens, 68p/500g, 34p
2 tins tomatoes, value ones 62p
2 onions, 10p
2 cloves garlic, 5p
80g pasta each, so for this quantity, 320g, value pasta 29p/500g, 18p
60g grated Grana Padano Asda £2/160g, 75p
tblsp oil 1p

Total cost £2.05, 51p per serving
Serves 4

Fine chop the onion and saute in a little oil until transparent, add the garlic and cook for a further minute or two. Add the tomatoes and fine chopped spring greens and cook gently until the greens are done. I strip the leaves from the stems and slice the stems up thinly and add those too.

Season with salt and pepper.

While the sauce is cooking, boil the pasta in salted water. Drain well, mix in the sauce and pile onto plates or into a serving dish. Top with the parmesan, or pass round separately. You could use cheddar instead if you like, it will be just as nice. Any greens will work here, so white cabbage, kale, savoy, anything like that. You could add a bit of sweetcorn, or mushrooms.

You can add paprika, chilli, cumin and coriander powder, a bit of fresh ginger, a splash of soy/hoisin sauce

The Abel & Cole recipe had sausages in it, which would be lovely, or bits of bacon or chorizo.

I had this at lunchtime today, I used fancy Approved Foods pasta. It was substantial, very filling and very delicious. One I will be doing again for sure