Gorgeous Green Fusilli with Bacon

This delight of a dish involves hardly any cooking and the sauce  is so quick and easy (it takes around the same length of time to prepare as the pasta takes to cook). This is one of my favourite recipes as usually when you are trying to find low point pasta meals, you would stick to tomato based pastas as they are lower in points. This recipe however, is a nice low point tomato free alternative. Depending on how hungry I am I sometimes add an extra handful of spinach leaves whole at the end and let it wilt in the heat.

Ingredients

Serves 2 = 12sp (previously 11pp) per person

100g Fusilli Pasta

225g Bag of Spinach

3 Garlic Cloves, peeled

150g Ricotta

Juice of a lemon

30g grated parmesan

1/2 tsp crushed chillies

Good pinch of salt (up to 1/4 tsp to taste)

Small grating of nutmeg

2 slices of lean smoked back bacon, fat removed and chopped

Box of Mushrooms, sliced

1 courgette, peeled into strips using potato peeler

Method

Put the fusilli on to cook in a pan of salted boiling water. Meanwhile take a frying pan and fry the bacon in 1KAL until nearly crispy. Add the mushrooms to the frying pan and cover in half of the crushed chillies. Cook until soft in 1KAL.

In a blender add the peeled whole garlic cloves, ricotta, spinach (you may need to add this in batches), juice of the lemon, grated parmesan, nutmeg and the rest of the crushed chillies. Season to taste with plenty of salt and pepper. Blitz in the blender until a smooth sauce is formed. I usually add some of the pasta water to make the sauce a little looser.

Drain the cooked pasta in colander and return to the empty pan. Pour the sauce over pasta and mix and warm through on hob. Reserve 1 tbsp of the bacon and mushrooms and then add the rest to the sauce pan and stir until warm. Stir through the courgette, let soften a little and then serve in large pasta bowls and top with the remaining bacon and mushrooms.

Enjoy!