Pasta with Greens & Tomato Sauce

From EatingWell: Winter 2003

This homey pasta dish uses pancetta (Italian bacon) in the tomato sauce, but for vegetarians it can be easily omitted. The collards and Parmesan elevate the calcium count to rival a cup of milk.

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4 Reviews for Pasta with Greens & Tomato Sauce

02/23/2013

Anonymous

Simple and Tasty

I made this recipe as written only omitting the pancetta. My husband and I both enjoyed it thoroughly. I found it very simple to make and did not have an issue with the sauce not getting into the shells enough as another reviewer mentioned. I did simmer the tomatoes a bit longer than 20 minutes, stirring them periodically and using a potato masher to mash them as I went. I feel as though this created a sauce of ideal consistency for the shells and recipe.

Also, in response to the reviewer who disliked the time required to prep the collards: they can be prepped quite quickly by stemming them as you would with spinach, stacking all of the stemmed leaves on top of each other and then rolling like a cigar. Cut the collards once lengthwise and then slice along the "cigar" in roughly 1" pieces. I used this method to prep the collards for this recipe and the pieces were of ideal size.

Pros: Healthy, easy

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01/27/2013

Anonymous

Recommends this recipe

Very Tasty Dish

Although the greens and tomatoes were good, it didn't mix very well with the pasta. You really need a more creamy sauce for pasta shells so that the cream gets into and around the shells. I think a linquine pasta would work better. I also like my tomatoes cooked longer then the suggested 20 minutes so, instead of parboiling the greens, I just added the uncooked greens with my tomato mixture and cooked it down until the greens were tender. I had to keep adding a little chicken broth and a little sugar to take the bitterness out of the tomatoes and greens but it turned out quite well.

Pros: The dish had a great flavor

Comments

11/26/2012

Anonymous

Recommends this recipe

Very healthy and quite tasty but there definitely are some cons to this dish

I decided to give this dish a 4 out of 5 stars mostly because of how healthy the dish is and how tasty it is for using a somewhat bitter green like collard greens. The bacon and tomatoes go so well together and don't forget the cheese it really adds to it! Great use for those bitter collard greens. The downsides: it takes MUCH longer than the estimated time..prepping a pound collard greens takes a while, enough to where negative point of such a time taking dish almost out weighs the quality of the dish produced. The taste just isn't worth the amount of time. Also, you'd need a pretty freaking large skillet to fit everything they suggest, I have a very large skillet and everything just barely fit. Either use your massive skillet or make this in a large pot. This is a great dish overall just annoying technical notes like the actual time of the dish and the actual utensils needed.

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12/01/2011

Anonymous

Recommends this recipe

Delicious AND Healthy!!

Printed this recipe out and it hung around for months before I tried it....I just couldn't wrap my head around collards, tomato sauce, and pasta. Finally fixed it and even my greens-a-phobe husband thought it was very good. Haven't tried it with bacon and we definitely use more parmesan which makes it even yummier!

Pros: Easy, inexpensive (even with the pancetta); healthy; delicious

Comments