Showing posts with label Pasta. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Pasta. Show all posts

Monday

Fettucine with Peas, Asparagus, and Pancetta


Simon is blessed, as in full-on, gift-from-God blessed. There isn't enough food in the world to slow his metabolism down. So, you can imagine his confusion when I make such ridiculous statements as "I only eat pasta once a week".























I love pasta. I love meat sauces, and cream sauces, and carbonaras, and baked pasta. I love it all - but I don't have the metabolism of a 12 year-old. So when the new Bon Appetit came out with 3000 different pasta recipes I was desperate to try, I had to choose carefully.


In the end, I went with the fettucine from the magazine's cover. Partly because it looked easy (and I didn't start cooking until 6:00) and partly because it has asparagus and there was some lovely looking Ontario asparagus at the green grocers. Also, it has pancetta. I love pancetta. I love the way it's like bacon but seems somehow more elegant. And I love the way the pink and white ribbing make it look like candy. I love it so much I ate a third of it while cooking the rest of the ingredients.























What I love about this recipe, is how absolutely green it is. It's like the pasta is an afterthought. And honestly, if for some reason or other you weren't eating pasta, you could probably eat it without as some sort of Asparagus, Peas, and Pancetta warm salad (yum!?!). What I don't like about this recipe is that it was a ridiculous amount of work for what looked like a simple pasta dish. I'd definitely make it again, but I don't know that I'd follow the recipe exactly. It's the perfect kind of dish to improvise with whatever looks good at the market.




Wednesday

Macaroni and Cheese

Decided to make Macaroni and Cheese yesterday. It was yummy but I never can get the sauce-to-macaroni ratio right. I do it the classic way, with a Bechamel cheese sauce. Though I added a LOT more sharp cheddar and a little bit of nutmeg. We also added some mustard (I think it was White Wine Mustard?) to make it a bit more grown-up (of course, smothering it in ketchup probably negates the sophistication added by a couple of tablespoons of mustard).











It was tastey but could have used a sharper cheddar and a bit more sauce. Unfortunately, I forgot to get a picture before eating it so all my pictures have a giant chunk missing, making it resemble a macaroni-and-cheese cross section:












Going to have to make something considerably healthier tonight becuase lately all my food has been the same colour as butter. Maybe the Pork Tenderloin Stir-Fry that I always make when I went something with some green vegetable in it? I'm a sucker for a tenderloin...