We felt like pasta and I felt like experimenting. This is what I ended up making. No recipe, just sort of winged it using some of the concepts I've been learning over the past six months. Guess what? It worked! Sorry I don't have a fancy French or Italian name for this, only a description of what I made -- Tortellini with creamy bacon and pea sauce! There you have it, truth in advertising.
Looking in the fridge I found a pound of bacon. Hmmm, bacon makes everything taste good, right? I cut it up into 1" pieces and cooked it it in the skillet and then drained it. I left just a little of the bacon drippings in the skillet and added diced onions. As the onions were cooking I added in about 1 1/2 tablespoons of paprika (I say about because I didn't really measure this).
While the onions were cooking I started the water boiling. Sorry, I'm not sharing my secret recipe for boiled water. I'll leave that for you to figure out. As the onions were turning transluscent, I put the tortellini in the boiling water to cook for about 3-5 minutes.
Wen the onions were done I turned the heat on moderately high and added a 1/4 cup of broth and 1/4 cup of white grape juice. I used the liquid to deglaze the pan and then boiled it until it had reduced down to a syrupy consistency. Then to turn it into a nice creamy sauce, 1 cup of heavy whipping cream plus a dash of salt and pepper and a "splash" of lemon juice were added. The sauce was stirred constantly while brought to a boil and then cooked for a couple of minutes until thickened enough to coat a spoon.
As the sauce approached the thickness I wanted, I added about 1/2 cup of frozen peas and the bacon I'd cooked at the beginning. Finally, the torellini was drained when it was ready and then added into the sauce.
I still don't know what to call this but I know how to describe it -- delicious! Apparently cream can be used to turn just about anything into a pretty tasty sauce. Oh, of course having bacon in it certainly didn't hurt either. It turned out pretty good, was easy to make, and...I'll probably never have it again since I didn't follow a recipe and just made it up as I went. That's actually making cooking a bit more fun -- knowing that I can add ingredients without needing to measure everything precisely.
Let me know if you have a proper name for this. No matter what, you certainly would be safe trying to make it even if you don't know what to tell your family you're making.
Bon Appetit!
Comments