Presto Pasta - Peas and Ham Pasta

Peas are one of my favorite vegetables. Although you can’t beat them fresh in the summer, we’ve found an organic frozen product that is pretty darned good. I have long been a fan of pasta and peas together, along with combos such as the one below, and my spinach fettucini with peas and proscuitto, one of my favorites was at Chianti’s Restaurant in Calgary; we’d go for their Monday night cheap pasta special and I’d always get the pasta with chicken and peas in tomato sauce. So good.

The recipe is originally from Nigella Lawson and I have long had this on my list to try but never had a craving for pasta at the same time I had some ham on hand. But after Easter there is always some leftover ham in our fridge, so all I needed to do was pick up some cream to be ready to go.

This pasta is ridiculously fast to make - put the pasta on to cook, and in the 10-ish minutes it takes to cook, chop your ham, get out your peas and cheese, measure out your cream. Once the noodles are ready, you’ll be eating in a flash. I have altered her recipe slightly, most noticeably by using light cream in place of heavy. If you are not worried about fat, go full cream if you like.

Peas and Ham Pasta

200 g short pasta (I love fusilli)
200 g frozen peas
100 g diced ham
1/2 cup light cream
3 or 4 TB grated parmesan cheese
pepper

Cook pasta in a large pot of boiling salted water. When the pasta is 1 or 2 minutes away from being done, add the peas into the pot. Drain and set aside. Place the empty pot back on the stove and add the ham, cream and cheese. Season with pepper and stir until warm, this should only take a minute. Add the pasta and peas in and stir well. Add more cheese if desired, and serve.

This will serve 2-4 people, depending how large or small your servings are. This is good the next day, you may want to add a little splash of cream.

A lovely dish for Presto Pasta Nights, this week hosted by Hillary at Chew On That!