Pasta With Broccoli-Ricotta Sauce

To make a creamy, verdant sauce for pasta, we blend blanched-until-tender broccoli stalks and baby spinach with a little ricotta and a few high-impact ingredients. We blanch the florets separately until tender-crisp, to be tossed and sauced with the pasta. Make sure to purchase broccoli with stalks attached—not just the crowns that are sold in many markets these days—because the stalks are integral to the dish. As for the pasta, choose a short, stubby, sauce-gripping shape. Penne rigate, fusilli, campanelle or rigatoni all do very well. A single pot of water cooks the stalks, florets and the pasta, so if you’re one to estimate the water amount rather than measure it, make sure you have enough to go the distance.