Spinach and Bacon Pasta.

So, we have a vegetable garden that I'm trying to make use of. I bought some english spinach when I was buying things to put in it, and I had no real idea about what I could actually use the spinach for. I usually just use baby spinach leaves in salads, and that's the extent of the spinach usage. These ones are bigger and thicker and I feel that they need to be cooked. So I picked a bunch last night and today I decided to use it in pasta. Oh my god. This was one of the best things I've eaten. So now I will share. I don't have any photos of the cooking process, just the before and after, because I didn't realise until after I'd tasted it that I wanted to share the recipe with everyone.
Also, I don't measure things when I'm cooking things like pasta sauces. I just put a bunch of stuff in and hope it works (it always does, by the way!). So, here it is...

Spinach and Bacon Pasta
Serves 1.

Ingredients.
1 tablespoon olive oil
1/4 an onion
2 little cloves of garlic (or however much you want to put in, I'm not sure how many people like lots of garlic...)
3 button mushrooms
2 rashers of short cut bacon (I used three but that was probably too much)
About 1 tablespoon of pine nuts (probably too much, so put in however many you want)

1 handfull of spinach leaves

About 1 teaspoon of butter. Or enough to cover everything lightly, use as much or as little as you want. 

About 150g cooked pasta (I used leftover pene)

Parmesan and pepper to taste (I like a LOT of cheese...)

Method.

Heat oil in frypan. Finely chop onion and garlic. Fry until the onion is whiteish. While that's frying, chop up the mushrooms into large slices. I got about 4 slices per mushroom. Mushrooms shrink a lot when they're frying and in this dish I think bigger pieces are better. Add the mushrooms and fry till they're cooked a bit. Meanwhile, cut up the bacon into however big slices you want. Add that. When everything looks almost ready, add the pine nuts. Keep an eye on these because they burn easily and then they don't taste too good. Tear up the spinach into smallish pieces when the pine nuts are cooked and add them. Add butter to cover everything lightly, and add the pasta and mix it through.

Put in a bowl to serve and add however much parmesan you want and a bit of pepper.

YUM.

before cooking

Finished product! With a hazelnut iced coffee.