Cookbook Chronicles: Green Angel Hair with Garlic Butter

Cookbook Chronicles is an on-going series at The Bookery. Over the course of the next year, we’re exploring Deb Perelman’s 2022 cookbook Smitten Kitchen Keepers, cooking one recipe a month and sharing our thoughts. 

It’s no secret that here at The Bookery, we have a deep and abiding love for Deb Perlman’s zucchini butter spaghetti. It’s delicious, easy, and did we mention delicious? 

So when it came time to make our next recipe from her cookbook, it just seemed right that it be a pasta dish, especially one that also featured a green veggie. Plus, this recipe is the cover model for Smitten Kitchen Keepers. You’ve probably already realized that expectations were very, very high for this recipe. 

The recipe: Green Angel Hair with Garlic Butter, p. 125

The cookbook: Smitten Kitchen Keepers by Deb Perelman

The details: All good cooks know it’s important to read through the entire recipe before you make it, but I’ll admit I’d only skimmed this one and didn’t realize until I was committed to making it for dinner that I should have started roasting the garlic much earlier! 

This recipe starts with a large head of garlic, halved and baked for 35-45 minutes in a lot of butter and a little bit of salt. Because I didn’t realize this until later, I’m not sure I roasted my garlic quite enough, because it didn’t seem as flavorful as I’d hoped. But besides that, the rest of the recipe was pretty straightforward: angel hair pasta cooked just a few minutes shy of done, spinach mixed with the roasted garlic and pulsed in a food processor or chopper, with some reserved water from the pasta to help it come together. Finally, you put it all together—pasta and spinach sauce—and cook for a few minutes before topping with freshly grated Parmesan. 

The adjustments: I actually made this recipe exactly as instructed, using all the ingredients listed. There’s a first time for everything, I guess! 

The verdict: Let’s just say that the expectations were really high for this recipe—and it didn’t quite live up to them. I wanted to love this. It includes so many things I like: pasta, garlic, butter and spinach. But somehow, at least with my feeble attempt, the flavors didn’t quite meld. The garlic didn’t seem to add enough flavor, and the spinach flavor seemed a little too strong. 

All that said, I’ll definitely try this one again—because there’s a very good chance I’m the one that caused the issues I didn’t love about this recipe! 

Up Next: Zucchini and pesto lasagna, p. 163

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