Cooking
with Ellen:
Pasta with Ricotta and Peas
By FBWorld Team
I
started out with a goal this year. I wanted to
completely change the way I cooked for my family, so I
set myself a goal. I was going to identify 15 winning
recipes that I wanted to repeat and make over and over
again. I was looking for some new tried and trues.
Reading
recipes is my hobby. I am up pouring over new recipes
I find in the middle of the night, every night, like a
crazy habit, from a crazy, sleep deprived woman! I take
my trusty I pad to bed with me, and with the light shining
from my screen, browse recipes off the various blogs into
the wee hours of the morning, uninterrupted. There, I
find and bookmark the ones I want to try, usually to my
twitter account so I can find them easily the next day.
When I am not browsing through some of the best recipe
blogs in existence, I am browsing through my personal
library of over 1000 cookbooks. So with all this great
instruction at my finger tips, you would think I would
have figured out by now how to be the greatest cook in
existence. Well, I haven't. No matter how you slice it,
I am just getting started. Every day brings something
new.
An
old biology teacher in college once pointed out the marvels
of science by demonstrating that there are only 12 notes
in the universe (separated by half notes) , yet the amounts
of songs and melodies in the universe are endless. The
same goes for recipes, except the amount of ingredients
are almost as endless as the amount of recipes in creation.
Over
the years there has been entirely too much protein-salad-vegetable
presentations in my kitchen, and not enough creativity.
Although healthy meals were always an important outcome,
I wanted to work more with flavors, add better spice combinations,
more exciting salad dressings. As the publisher and editor
of Food and Beverage International magazine for 15 years,
I always had the notes of the greatest chefs at my fingertips,
and to this day, have one of the finest collections of
professional chef recipes available to all our readers.
But I myself was not that famously creative chef. I was
the working mom who had less than an hour to get dinner
on the table for two growing sons and a fellow publisher,
also known as my husband.
So
today I bring you something simple, and very tasty. An
easy dish, worthy of being added to that new "tried
and true" list. This is a pasta dish with Ricotta
cheese and fresh peas if you have them, frozen if you
don't. But each week I will bring you something different,
with an emphasis on something I tried in order to teach
myself one more skill.
The
outcome of this recipe will be as beautiful for you as
this picture presents.
Pasta
with Ricotta and Peas
Ingredients:
2 tbls. Olive Oil, (2 turns of the pan)
2 tbls. Butter
3 Lg. Shallots or (1 small onion, very finely chopped)
4 Cloves Garlic, (finely chopped)
Salt and Pepper
1 cup Chicken or Vegetable Stock
2 cups Fresh Shelled Peas
2 cups Fresh Ricotta
2 tbls. Fresh Thyme, (finely chopped)
Zest of 1 Lemon
1 lb. Conchiglie (small, conch shell-shaped pasta) or
other short-cut pasta like penne rigate, farfalle or short
fusilli)
1 cup Freshly Grated Parmigiano-Reggiano
1 cup Fresh Flat-Leaf Parsley, (chopped)
1/2 cup Mint, (chopped)
EVOO - Extra Virgin Olive Oil, (for drizzling)
Procedures:
1. Bring a large pot of water to a boil
for the pasta.
2.
Heat a large skillet over medium heat with 2 turns of
the pan of olive oil.
3.
When hot, add butter to oil.
4.
When it foams, add shallots or onions and garlic, and
season with salt and pepper.
5.
Stir 3 minutes then add stock; boil and reduce heat to
a low simmer.
6.
Salt pasta water, drop pasta to cook to a minute shy of
al dente.
7.
Add peas to simmering stock and cook 3-4 minutes then
stir in the ricotta and warm through; add thyme and lemon
zest.
8.
Reserve 1/2 cup starchy, pasta water then drain pasta.
9.
Add pasta to sauce along with the starchy water and grated
cheese; toss to coat.
10.
Add most of the parsley and mint, and transfer to serving
bowl.
Top
with: drizzle of EVOO and remaining mint and
parsley.
Here's
till next week,
Ellen Walsh
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