Pasta with Pesto, Peas, Pancetta and Grilled Chicken

Pasta with pesto, peas, pancetta, bocconcini pearls and grilled chicken. A great summer dish packed with flavour.

This is a meal I crave in the early weeks of summer but is great any time of year if you have had the forethought to freeze pesto or just use store-bought. The thought of the flavour packed pesto combined with the hit of fresh sweet peas, salty bite of pancetta and little bits of mellow mozzarella are making my mouth water as I write this. I make the pesto in a fairly typical way – lots of basil. a clove of garlic, toasted pine nuts, fresh grated Parmigiano-Reggiano, pinch of salt and pepper and lots of olive oil. No great revelations there. This recipe is about convenience so if you don’t have a big basil plant in your yard, or have no inclination to make pesto, then the store bought stuff would be just fine. Use any kind you like, but I think the refrigerated stuff is better than the shelf stable pesto in jars.

I am a recovering picky eater but I still do have quite a few holdovers from when I was a kid. For example, the photo in this post shows cherry tomatoes as a serving suggestion. Well, this plate was not my dinner. I don’t like cherry tomatoes so this  was Simon’s. He loves them but I often compare the burst of the squishy inside of a cherry tomato to the popping of a zit. Yes, what a lovely metaphor to read on a food blog. You’re welcome. Anyhow, I also don’t like peas that are over-cooked so for this I only use fresh peas and I cook them for less than a minute. I put them in with the pasta when it is almost done just to bring out the vibrant green of the peas.

If you don’t have pancetta on hand then by all means, use regular bacon. If you want to get fancy with the mozzarella then I suggest getting some nice buffalo mozzarella. For this I buy the bocconcini pearls – they are about the size of a big blueberry. I just drain the container and add the whole lot to the pasta just before serving. They don’t have the same richness as the buffalo mozzarella but they are cute and convenient to add.

In my house this was a very kid-friendly meal. Timothy gobbled it up. He had no problem with the pesto but did balk at the peas. We would hide the peas when we were helping get some pasta with bacon and cheese onto his fork. I am not above trickery and subterfuge when getting healthy food into my little boy. He would eat macaroni and cheese, crackers and grapes at every meal given the option.

The leftovers for this are pretty good the next day for lunch. The oil does separate somewhat from the pesto and it can be a little greasy but I just leave the excess oil in the bottom of the container and carry on while I eat at my desk at work.