Pasta is my true love. Okay, one of my true loves. It is hard for me to make a pasta dish and have any pasta left when it is time to pull the dish together. I end up eating most of the pasta as soon as it is cool enough to start eating. Bad, I know. But it is so good. I can’t be helped.
This pasta is so creamy and can be whipped together in a hurry. Especially if you have leftover bacon in your fridge. I don’t know how I ended up with leftover bacon. I can’t explain why I didn’t eat it.
Boil some noodles according to package directions, minus two minutes.
Add frozen peas and finish boiling the pasta and peas for remaining two minutes. Drain pasta and peas. Reserve some of the water if you like to be healthy.
P.S. I did NOT reserve water. It’s all cream for me man. I live on a dairy.
Like I said, I miraculously ended up with leftover bacon. So fry some if you don’t have it sitting around. Then dice it up.
I also had some leftover herbed butter in the fridge so I used it. I just have to use up the leftovers so I have room for more in the fridge. Besides I can’t stand the thought of wasting food. If you don’t happen to have leftover herbed butter from when you grilled steaks, then just use butter. It will be just fine.
Sautee mushrooms in the butter.
Add cream and pasta water (if you are healthy). Then pesto and Parmesan cheese. Give it a good stir until the cheese is melted. Add pasta and peas into sauce. Add bacon. Toss to coat. If pasta is too thick use reserved pasta water to thin it.
Sprinkle with more grated Parmesan cheese and parsley, or basil or whatever you have around. It’s still too early in the growing season to have any greens around here and I haven’t been to the store in a long time. So I had to refrigerator dive until I found something. Serve and enjoy!
Creamy Pesto Pasta
Ingredients
- 12 ounces pasta I used penne
- 2 cups frozen peas
- 1 cup fried and diced bacon
- 1 cup sliced mushrooms
- 2 Tablespoons Butter
- 2 Tablespoons Pesto
- 1 1/2 cups heavy cream or 1 cup cream and 1/2 cup pasta water
- 1/2 cup Parmesan cheese
- Parmesan cheese for serving
Instructions
- Boil water according to package directions minus 2 minutes. Add frozen peas to boiling water and continue to boil for remaining 2 minutes. Drain pasta and peas. Reserve about a cup of water.
- Fry, drain and crumble or dice bacon.
- Melt butter over medium high heat. Sautee mushrooms in butter. Add cream and pasta water if desired. Add 1/2 cup parmesan cheese and pesto. Stir until cheese melts.
- Add bacon, peas and pasta to the sauce. Toss to coat. Add more pasta water if sauce needs thinned.
- Serve with parmesan cheese.
I love pasta as well. Anything with pasta in it sure to be a hit.
Because I grew up on a farm, by Dad was a meat, potatoes, bread and dessert for every meal kind of a guy. If for some reason he was out of town, which was almost never, we would beg my Mom to make a casserole, pizza, tacos, anything but meat and potatoes. We still wanted the bread and dessert though.
To this day, I love pasta because I was deprived as a child.
Grandpa Chum loves pasta too, he loves things like this because they are not too spicy and the are easy to eat. I love pasta because it is usually something fast and easy. And something like this doesn’t cost a lot to fix and everybody loves it as leftovers. Especially if there is bread and dessert to go along with it.
Thanks again for sharing your love.
Mom