Peas and Carrots Pasta Recipe
Food blogs are very visual things. I mean, how many of us frequent to blogs where no photos of the featured food are included?
I, for one, visit exactly ZERO of those. I do appreciate the dialogue that travels with the food. I guess this is obvious to my readers because you rarely come across a simple recipe posting without significant verbage to read.
I am not offended, however, if you skim the words and go straight for the recipe. Honestly, I found myself guilty of such behavior when I first stumbled across the following recipe. I learned my lesson, though, when not only did I skim the preamble to the recipe, but the recipe as well.
I found myself one week night, ready to get cooking my Peas and Carrots Pasta, dicing up carrots into 1/2″ chunks in preparation for my rare carbolicious feast. And then I reviewed the recipe. And found that the carrots were to be roasted, in large chunks, with garlic and thyme.
That night, we had plan B for dinner. Big salads. With tons of chopped of carrots.
This recipe is great if you roast a bunch of veggies for one meal, early in the week, and pull out 2 or 3 carrots and 3 cloves of garlic from the bunch, setting them aside for precisely this use.
I didn’t do that. I took the hard way out. But I did roast the veggies early in the morning for that evening’s dinner. This cut down on cook time in the afternoon and allowed me to use the high temperature oven when it is the coolest outside.
This pasta dish is just delicious. The carrots are hidden in the sauce. In fact, it looks like bright and orangey mac and cheese. But in reality, it is sweet and creamy carrot goodness mixed with pasta and peas. Forrest Gump was right. Peas and carrots are a match made in heaven. Especially when you add a dab of heavy cream.
- One Year Ago: Lentil Tagine
- Peas and Carrots Pasta (2 servings, adapted from here, seen on Taste and Tell)
- 1.5 cups uncooked whole wheat penne pasta
- 3 carrots, trimmed and peeled
- 3 cloves garlic, peeled
- 1 t rubbed thyme or 1 T fresh, chopped, thyme leaves
- 1/8 tsp red pepper flakes
- 1/3 cup heavy cream
- 3 T Parmesan cheese
- 3/4 cup frozen peas
Preheat oven to 400 F.
Place the carrots, garlic, and thyme in a small roasting pan. Spray with olive oil spray, season with salt & pepper and stir to coat. Roast in the oven for 45 – 50 minutes brown & caramelized.
While the pasta is cooking, put the roasted carrots & garlic into a food processor or blender. Add the cream, Parmesan & red pepper. Blend until smooth. Right as the pasta finishes cooking, add the frozen peas to the boiling water (they will thaw instantly). Drain pasta and peas, reserving 1 cup of pasta water. Return pasta to the hot pan.
Add pasta water to the blended carrot sauce to achieve desired consistency. Start by adding 1/2 cup of the water and add more if desired.
Stir in the blended carrot sauce and the peas. Return sauce to pan and stir to coat pasta and peas.
Per serving
Calories 482.8
Total Fat 18.4 g
Cholesterol 59.7 mg
Total Carbohydrate 64.5 g
Dietary Fiber 10.6 g
Sugars 9.4 g
Protein 17.0 g