Zoe's Recipe - Spinach Carbonara

Zoe's Recipe - Spinach Carbonara
By Zoe Lancaster

One thing I know for sure is that feeding our bodies with good quality nutrition and vitamins won’t just help our bodies to build immune defenses, but will also help our minds. Building your defenses internally while protecting yourself and others externally has never been more important, and while taking supplements such as Vitamin D can be a huge benefit, nothing will have a bigger impact on good gut health as good quality plant-based foods. If you can’t get hold of fresh then go for frozen, you won’t be surprised to see that while loo roll is in short supply frozen berries aren’t!

Fresh Spinach - My favourite and most versatile plant is spinach, and it is currently in great supply globally. Why not grab yourself some spinach and make this easy and low cost fresh dish that will keep taste buds happy. It has a specific type of sugar that helps grow healthy gut bacteria to boost your immune system!

Ingredients (for 2 people)

500g or more spinach try to get loose spinach – tear the spinach by hand
Half an onion chopped small
Celery x 2 stalks sliced into small bits
1 medium leek sliced into small bits
Garlic x 2 bulbs crushed
2 x smokey bacon or a tablespoon of capers for veggie/vegan choices chopped
Cup of white wine
Cup of cream can use soya cream for vegan
50g Parmesan or nutritional yeast for vegan grated
Teaspoon of good quality olive oil
Stock cube veg

Method

Pop the oil in the pan with the garlic, leek, onion, bacon/capers and celery, fry until soft.
Crumble the stock cube into the wine and mix.
Start putting a little of the wine/stock mix in the pan and let it boil down slightly.
In the meantime, put the spinach, cream and Parmesan (save a little to add on top at the end) in a blender and blend until smooth.
Put your favourite pasta or spaghetti on to cook.
Put the spinach mixture in with the garlic mixture and turn heat down, keep topping up with the wine to get the desired consistency. Try not to cook too long, the goodness in the spinach is what you are after.
Drain the pasta or spaghetti and mix together and serve straight away with a little extra Parmesan on top
Enjoy!
This is a super tasty recipe that is still feeding you lots of great stuff, leeks and onion also have vitamin A which is also important for immune function and celery is a great source of fiber. Parmesan contains the same amount of protein as other cheeses, but is easier to digest. If you are using nutritional yeast, remember it’s a great sauce of B12 which helps to keep the body’s nerve and blood cells healthy, keeping you strong and not feeling tired.

All that said, this is a tasty recipe and one I will be adding to the menu at Cycle Retreats in Season 4.

I’d love to hear your thoughts about this recipe and I would love to hear of any recipes you would like to see from me.

Happy cooking!

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