Pappardelle & Peas

We are constantly looking for new ingredients to play with in the kitchen. Pappardelle pasta is not as easy to find as you might think where we live. If you want spaghetti, fettucini, linguini, rotini, penne - no problem. Pappardelle, however, is not so common in our grocery stores. Just about every time we enter the Chicagoland area, we stop at Trader Joe's. It's probably unnatural how much we love shopping there. We even went on our anniversary trip and were mistaken as locals because we bought so much stuff. We're alright with it.

Anyway, we found this pasta and formed a meal around it. We made a "cream" sauce to pair with it and kept the seasoning light. And, it was great. We wish we'd bought more papparedelle. You could probably substitute fettucini and be fine, however.

Here's what you need: 

1 package of pappardelle pasta

1/2 bag frozen peas

5 Tbsp margarine (we didn't say it was healthy)

1/3 cup 2% milk

1 1/2 Tbsp Parmesan cheese

Freshly ground black pepper

Kosher salt for the pasta water

Here's what you do:

Start heating your pasta water. If you're cooking on a gas burner, this will probably take you much less time, so you can probably wait a bit if you want. We have electric, so take that into consideration.

While your water is heating, heat your frozen peas through in a sauce pan. You don't need to get them hot, really, just not frozen any more.

Melt the margarine in a high-walled skillet.

Simmer until the butter starts to brown, then add the milk.

Crack as much black pepper over that as you desire and let it bubble away and thicken for a few minutes.

Your water should hopefully be boiling now, so go ahead and salt the water liberally and drop the pasta in. We didn't add salt anywhere else in the dish, so be sure the pasta has good flavor!

Right about the time you drop the pasta, add your peas to the sauce.

Instead of straining the pasta, we just scooped it out of the water with a spaghetti fork and added it right to the sauce. Give that a good toss. 

If you think your sauce is a little thick, add a couple splashes of pasta water until you achieve the consistency you want. Keep in mind you really want the sauce to stick to the noodle and not be runny. Once you're sure you coated the pasta thoroughly, plate it up.

Enjoy!