Peashoot, Bacon and Ricotta Penne

As much as I have learned to now love cooking just for myself, I really do prefer to share my food. And even more so if I have little helpers to assist! There is something about sharing that ignites my inner 'feeder' setting, no one ever leaves hungry!

My eldest niece A is also a little culinary gem of the future and eats far more ‘weird stuff’ than I did at her age and makes a great sous chef in the kitchen! I hope to bring you lots more of recipes me make together, however we are both rather greedy and have often forgotten to take pictures!

We made this great, speedy and surprisingly frugal pasta dish a few months back but I just hadn't gotten around to posting it …. Its full of bold flavours and was thoroughly tasty!

Serves two:

Ingredients

125g ricotta
Cooking Bacon trim - a rough handful
100g bag peashoots
2 heaped tbsp Purple basil
Black pepper
200g penne pasta

1) Boil pasta as per packet instructions

2) Meanwhile, when the pasta is almost cooked through, fry the bacon in its own fat until browned, turn off the heat. Drain the pasta, reserving about half a cupful.

3) Gently stir in ricotta to the bacon pan along with a little of the reserved cooking water to loosen slightly, add to the pasta, wilt in the peashoots and basil, season with black pepper and garnish with a few more leaves.

                            

Whilst it has sadly died off now, the purple basil was a delight to grow and made an interesting sight on the kitchen windowsill! When warmth beckons again upon the windowsill I hopefully will be able to seed some more!

Budgets are definitely tightening for a lot, I know mine has been both ends of the spectrum over the past few years, what with redundancies, moving and illness and as a result I have managed to become very thrifty in the kitchen - and this dish whilst including the luxury item of peashoots, everything else was  already to hand. 

The Bacon was a real economical purchase – I picked up Sainsbury’s cooking bacon for the first time  - heck it was getting chopped up anyway who cares if its pretty rashers - it was a huge packet for 99p and I froze four separate portions, which contained about 6 chunky rashers and various, meaty, not too fatty/rindy offcuts that I had expected! I costed this dish as being approximately £2.10 to serve two, a winner I think for something so fresh and tasty! The ricotta was also leftover from cheesecake so was a great use up of it too!

This is also being sent over to Helen's Credit Crunch Munch event: