Pasta with Spinach, Sun-Dried Tomatoes and Goat Cheese

I have two logs of goat cheese in my fridge that need to be used up by the fall.  Now that's definitely not a difficult thing for me to do.  But I'll take any "excuse" to make something with goat cheese.

This is a dish that I used as inspiration for a meal I made last year, but this time I decided to follow it (almost) exactly.  I used more spinach than it called for because hey, I like spinach.  I didn't have oil-packed tomatoes so I took my dry packed ones, put them in a shallow bowl, and covered them with oil.  And since I was planning on eating this over several days, I added the goat cheese to each individual serving, rather than all at once.  I also cooked the garlic and sun-dried tomatoes right with the spinach, rather than mixing them in with the goat cheese. 

All in all, this is delicious.  The goat cheese gives it a wonderfully creamy sauce.  And I love the flavor of garlicky spinach with sun-dried tomatoes.  I think I got 1 big dinner serving and 2 big lunch servings out of it.

Recipe: Pasta with Spinach, Sun-Dried Tomatoes and Goat Cheese (from Adventures in Shaw)
Ingredients:
4 oz sun-dried tomatoes, packed in oil (or pour olive oil over them a few hours before you use them)
1-2 cloves garlic, minced or crushed
several handfuls of spinach
6-8 oz tagliatelle (I used trader joe's pappardelle)
s&p to taste
pasta water

Directions:
Boil a large pot of salted water for the pasta.  Cook until al dente.
Heat oil from sun-dried tomatoes in a medium skillet on medium heat.  Add garlic - saute for 1 minute and then add the spinach and sun-dried tomatoes.  Add s&p to taste.

Add the cooked pasta directly to the spinach and tomatoes, and toss.  Crumble the goat cheese on top and toss it all together, adding pasta water as needed to thin out the sauce.

Enjoy!