Life goal: find ways to make pasta more healthy. I could seriously eat pasta for every single meal, but know that I shouldn’t! Salt for Life and their team challenged me and a few other bloggers to come up with healthy recipes featuring a few key ingredients (like our own version of Chopped!). This is my second recipe in the series, check out the avocado-toast appetizer I created for my first recipe.
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Guys, it’s hump day — and no one likes hump day — let alone the first one after the holidays, so I saved this recipe from a few weeks ago that’s completely focused on butter to make you feel better. One of the nicest presents I received for Christmas this year was from my grandparents and uncle; they got me a bunch of artisanal pasta and olive oils from a local pasta shop in my hometown. Clearly my family knows me well, carbs are my first love.
When it came time to test out one of those pastas I wanted to make it a super special dinner, so in addition to working on a nice sauce and some homemade meatballs, I got a fresh loaf of Italian bread and decided to whip up a special herbed butter to go with it. I roasted a whole head of garlic for about an hour in a small dish with some olive oil, salt, and pepper. Then once the garlic was cooked and soft, I used the food processor to combine the cloves with a 3 tablespoons of butter, a tablespoon of fresh grated parmesan cheese, a teaspoon of chopped rosemary, and a teaspoon of chopped thyme, plus a little more salt and pepper. The result was a sweet roasted garlic and herb-y butter spread that went perfectly with the little Italian feast I prepared!
I tried my hand and some homemade pasta this weekend, and finally got a chance to use the pasta machine we got for our wedding — the process of making pasta seems so daunting at first, but it’s actually amazingly simple, and so worth the effort! I tried two different methods, the first was a classic all-purpose flour and eggs combination, and the second used an egg flour and water. I also tried two different fillings with the dough variations, one was a ricotta, parmesan, and Italian sausage stuffing that I served with a red sauce, and the other was a butternut squash with maple brown sugar that my in-laws brought home to me from Vermont — I served those with brown butter and toasted pine nuts. I preferred the egg flour for a stuffed pasta like this, and think the all-purpose flour works better for a cut pasta like fettucini, but overall: YUM. Luckily I made about a gazillion of each, so I will be enjoying leftovers all week!
I’m not going to lie, I really enjoyed being snowed in this weekend. It was such a great excuse to be lazy, watch movies (saw To Catch a Thief for the first time!), and of course make some delicious comfort food. As part of my ‘get-your-relax-on’ strategy I made one of my favorite indulgent concoctions that I call ‘fat pasta’ (I’ll let you guess why). It was the perfect splurge for a cold wintry Sunday, yum! Sad to have to leave my house and deal with the aftermath of the storm today, I want my snow day to last for a just a little bit longer. 
Fat Pasta.
Ingredients
- Extra Virgin Olive Oil (EVOO)
- 1 Box of bowtie pasta
- 3 Slices of bacon
- 4 Cloves of garlic
- Flour
- 2 Boneless skinless chicken breasts
- Paprika
- Onion Powder
- Frozen peas
- 1 Cup of light cream
- Grated parmesan cheese
- Granulated sugar
- Salt & Pepper
Instructions
- Start a pot of boiling water
- Chop 3 slices of bacon into small bits, heat a skillet over medium heat and drizzle EVOO in pan, begin to brown the bacon
- Mince 4 cloves of garlic, add to pan
- Dredge cubed chicken in flour, season with paprika, onion powder, salt and pepper
- Add chicken to skillet and sauté (add EVOO as needed)
- Cook pasta as directed -- in the last two minutes of the pasta's cooking time, add in a handful of frozen peas, then drain and set aside
- Remove chicken, bacon and garlic mixture from pan and set aside, and melt 2 tbsp of butter in with leftover EVOO
- Whisk in 3 tbsp of flour until the mixture begins to thicken
- Whisk in 1 cup of light cream, 3 tbsp of parmesan cheese, and ¼ tsp of granulated sugar, continue to whisk until sauce thickens
- Stir in pasta and peas, top with chicken, bacon, garlic mixture.
- Season with salt and pepper, garnish with more parmesan.
