Tomorrow is Maudy Thursday, the Thursday before Easter. In Germany, Maudy Thursday is called Gründonnerstag which translates as Green Thursday (it also has a bunch of other names and I am not going to write a whole bit about the misnomer and history of why it is called Green Thursday … you’re here to read about food, not religion, right? Also, I am not Catholic. So there.) Anyway, one of the traditions is to each green food on Green Thursday, so I went about making Spinach pasta from scratch. I love homemade pasta. It is about a million times better than any dried pasta and really doesn’t take all that much effort. My pasta machine (one of those old fashioned hand-crank ones, though eventually I might get the attachment for my Kitchenaid) is one of the very first kitchen “appliances” that I ever received (back when I was in my early 20s?) and even though I don’t go through the effort all that often, it is always worth it.
I didn’t write a recipe for the finished dish pictured here, but in a nutshell, it is diced ham, frozen peas, a few tablespoons of cream and a liberal sprinkling of grated Parmesan, in a pan for about 3 minutes … exactly the amount of time that it tastes for the pasta to boil.