Fettuccini and ham are different foods I’ve heard of before. 12-20: Fettuccini with Ham is a dish I never could have imagined in my wildest dreams. It is both “piquant and tasty” as described below and I enjoyed the dish a lot.
Time for a confession: I have never cooked fettuccini nests before in my life before I prepared this dish. My parents weren’t adventurous with their pasta choices. We were strictly a spaghetti and angel hair household when it came to noodle pasta. Having a cream based sauce was rare also, they generally opted for a tomato-based sauce.
The fettuccini in the example photo above looks a little different from the nests in the photo below. The example noodles almost look homemade, as if they were hung to dry on a rack. KitchenAid makes a pasta drying rack (I had no idea this thing even exists).
Here’s all of the ingredients. As this dish contains peas, Jamie will choose not to eat it. I used both regular and spinach fettuccini nests so the final dish would have a bigger pop of color.
Chop! Slice! My knife skills made quick work of the onions and mushrooms. While I was slicing these, I had the salted water heating to a boil so I could drop the fettuccini in. I think I finished slicing before the water was at a rolling boil.
Boiling fettuccini takes approximately 9 to 11 minutes until the pasta is cooked al dente.
While the pasta was cooking, I also chopped the ham into slices so it’s easy to drop this ingredient into the pan.
The next stage involves sautéeing multiple vegetables. First, I cook down the yellow onion in this melted butter.
The photo above shows when I added the mushrooms into the pan to cook down and get some color.
Finally, I added the ham and everything cooked down to a delicious golden brown.
I added the flour and then a cup of milk and started stirring until a sauce formed. It was thinner because I didn’t use cream or half and half. My sauce came out more like a butter sauce. I added the peas and chopped some parsley for garnish while the sauce reduced. Finally, I added the noodles and combined everything together.
A striking dish, if I do say so myself. Topped with some Parmesan and parsley, this fettuccini with ham dish is a tasty dish that I would like to attempt to cook again in the future. Next time, I would cut the ham into larger pieces, keep the onion in larger pieces, and use some lactose free half and half instead of milk. I don’t know if we’ll ever cook through these recipes again, but fettuccini is quickly heading to the top of my favorite pasta list.
GRADE: A-
