enlightened pasta with peas, pancetta, and garlic-pecorino cream
Because the volume of pasta content I produce dwarfs all of my other content combined, most people I know are shocked to find out I really only make pasta once or twice a week, typically between Thursday and Saturday. But when I am stressed, worn, and crispy-fried from work, sprouting new gray hairs by the hour, I restore my wavering sense of self by doing things I know, with total confidence, I am good at. For better or worse, pasta is my second nature. And this particular one is one I know so well that it almost surprised me I’d never bothered before to write it down.
This is effectively just my enlightened fettuccine alfredo with additives, something I used to see all the time at chain Italian-American restaurants in the suburbs where I grew up but don’t really find often anymore on modern menus. However, this dish actually does have Italian roots: either in Piedmont, the pea-and-pancetta capital of Italy and the world, where it is served as a side dish and usually not in a cream sauce, or Naples, which swaps the pancetta for cubes prosciutto. I don’t think they’d mind what I did to it half as much as they’d mind my bloodline’s proximity to Sicily. Don’t tell anyone.
team pea or team NOPEa???? this will test you
Many people, I find, are weirdly and strongly anti-pea. You may be one of those people. I did a live Zoom mac and cheese demo for our office’s Thanksgiving all staff this year, and one of my coworkers was absolutely BLASTED in the chat for suggesting peas would make a nice mac addition (sorry Shannon!), but while I am personally not down to ruin my mac experience with a pea interjection, a handful of plump lil pea bois in a dish that is properly designed for them can’t be beat. It may not totally convert a hater, but it may introduce to them conflicting and compelling evidence for consideration, and that’s really all you can ask for.
finding the candle lighter was the hardest part
Start to finish, the whole thing also takes about 20 minutes, especially ideal for a Thursday night where you’ve already worked 50 hours in just four days and have stress-clenched hard enough to crack a molar and relish nothing more than the comfort of soft, soothing comfort food that demands nothing of you but will give you everything you in that moment so desperately need.
final final
RECIPE
An Italian-American restaurant menu staple, this simple pasta features crispy pancetta and tender green peas in a richly flavorful pecorino-garlic cream sauce and comes together for Italian-American Date Night™ in under 30 minutes.
Effortful time: 10 minutes
Total time: 20 minutes
Serves 2
YOU NEED
8 oz pasta, any shape will work—pictured here is campanelle from the Kroger Private Selection line
1 cup frozen peas
4 oz. diced pancetta, can sub bacon
1 tsp. olive oil
3 cloves of garlic, minced
1/2 cup heavy cream
1/2 cup grated pecorino romano cheese, can sub parm
1 tbsp. dried parsley
1/4 tsp. chili flakes, for optional kick
Salt to taste
Cracked black pepper
MAKE IT
Get prepped. Boil salted water for pasta. Mince your garlic. Dice your pancetta if needed.
Cook the pancetta. In another skillet, heat the olive oil over medium heat. Add the pancetta and cook, turning down the heat if it gets splatter-y, until the fat has nearly fully rendered and the pancetta is crisp, brown, and shrunken, about 5-6 minutes. You want it a liiiiittle crunchy to add some texture. Once this is done, remove the pancetta with a slotted spoon and save it on a plate, and pour out all but 1 tsp. of the fat.
Cook your pasta and peas together. While you cook your pancetta, drop in your pasta. Peas, weirdly, vary in cook time based on the kind—mine said 4-6 minutes, but they were big peas vs. petite peas, which take less. Whatever yours say, simply add those into the boiling water so that the pasta’s cook time and the pea cook time will end at the same time. Math is fun! When the pasta-pea combo is done, save 1 cup of pasta water, then drain.
Build the garlic pecorino cream sauce. Heat your remaining skillet fat back to medium. Add your minced garlic and cook until just fragrant, about 30 seconds. Immediately pour in 1/2 cup of cream, stir well, and lower the heat to low; cook until just beginning to bubble, about 1 minute.
Finish the pasta in sauce. Add the pancetta, pasta, and peas to the skillet, then season with the parsley, chili flakes, and a few twirls of black pep. Add half your cheese and a splash of pasta water, then start tossing together in the skillet. You should have a glossy, alfredo-like sauce forming quickly. Adjust with more pasta water if it looks sticky. Add the other half of the cheese and repeat.
Serve it up. Scoop into bowls and shower with more cheese.