Harissa beef with spinach, feta yogurt cream and noodles

When you read pasta and yogurt, you might inevitably think of pasta salad. Even worse – a pasta salad that is low in calories. Completely wrong. At least in this case. In the summer, something like feta yogurt cream is a nice thing because the noodles are hot but the cream cools them down a bit. Perfect for high temperatures. And we already had enough of them.

In the summer you can feel like this “whipped feta” can’t be missed anyway. At least not when you’re on social media. These white blobs suddenly appear everywhere and to be honest – at the beginning I found this “whipped feta” extremely boring. It can actually only survive if the rest of the dish is strongly seasoned. And (a little) spicy, because the spiciness of chili, Capsaicinis not water-soluble, but can best be reduced with fat. That’s why drinking water doesn’t help if you’ve bitten into a very hot chili pepper. In India people like to drink lassi, this drink with yogurt. This is exactly the right thing in such a case. By the way, alcohol dissolves capsaicin a little better than water, but not necessarily well. The best option is actually a dairy product that contains casein, which can bind capsaicin and release it from the receptors.
But enough about chemistry. Now we eat.

Harissa beef with spinach, feta yogurt cream and noodles

For two

25g pine nuts
200 g wholemeal rigatoni
1 ½ tbsp chopped parsley
1 ½ tbsp chopped mint (or coriander)

100g feta
80 g Greek yogurt (10% fat)
1 tbsp olive oil
1 tsp fresh lemon juice

1 tbsp olive oil
1 small red onion, finely chopped
2 cloves garlic, pressed
250 g minced beef
1 ½ tbsp harissa paste
½ tsp ground cumin
1 teaspoon smoked paprika powder
100g spinach
Sea salt
freshly ground black pepper

Roast the pine nuts in a pan without fat and then set aside.
Put the feta, yogurt, lemon juice and olive oil in a blender and puree into a smooth cream.

Cook the pasta in salted water according to package instructions and drain.

Heat the olive oil in a pan and first sauté the onions at a medium temperature for about 5 minutes until soft. Add the garlic and continue to sauté for another minute.
Add the minced meat, harissa paste and spices. Stir so that the paste and spices are well distributed. Season with a pinch of salt and a few turns of the pepper mill.
Wash the spinach and add it to the pan while it is still wet. Let it collapse for 2 minutes with the lid closed. Maybe add a little more salt.
Add the pasta to the pan and mix.

Distribute the pasta on plates, pour feta cream over it and sprinkle generously with parsley, mint and pine nuts.