The Sunday Night Dilemma: Pasta with Ham and Peas

Ah the weekly Sunday dilemma: Do I go food shopping for the week? Do I order Chinese food and feel gross afterwards? Do I rummage through the fridge to see what I can re purpose into some sort of dinner? Each has its pros and cons:

Shopping is very proactive and will be very satisfying once it's done and your fridge is full, but do you really want to face those crowds? And what if you miss the 4th quarter of the 4pm football games? And that sofa is just so comfortable!

Chinese food is delicious and satisfying at the time, but you know that you're going to immediately regret getting that order of General Gao's chicken, and the leftovers will tempt you for lunch or dinner the next day.

Your final option is the fridge scrounge. You know there has to be something in the fridge that can work for a meal, so you dive in. This past Sunday, I went for the fridge raid, and to my delight, I found leftover Thanksgiving ham, frozen peas, a shallot, garlic, and some angel hair pasta. Mix that with some wine, butter and flour, and we've got ourselves a dinner! Pasta with ham and peas in a white wine sauce is a really comforting, easy to make dish that will satisfy your Sunday dilemma and make for an excellent and reasonably healthy lunch the next day.













Ingredients:
Angel hair pasta (about half a package)
4-6 slices Ham (ideally thick cut, but deli sliced ham will work too)
1 cup Frozen peas
1 shallot chopped
2 garlic cloves chopped
1/2 tablespoon butter
1 tablespoon olive oil
2 tablespoons grated parmesan
1/4 cup white wine
1 tablespoon flour
salt and pepper

To Cook:

1. Bring water in a large pot to a boil. Once it's boiling, add salt.
2. Heat butter and oil in the pan
3. When hot, add shallot and garlic, and once the shallot and garlic start to become translucent, add the ham and cook until starting to brown
4. Add the flour and stir constantly until it becomes golden
5. Pour in the wine, peas, and parmesan and stir, simmer the sauce for 10 minutes
6. Put the angel hair pasta in the boiling water until desired doneness, about 5 minutes
7. Drain the pasta and reserve some of the boiling liquid. If the sauce is too thick, add some of the pasta water to thin it out. Pour the sauce over the pasta and serve.