It chops, It dices, It slices…..

Yeah if you come over to do some cooking at my house you no longer have to do the tedious work of chopping onions by hand. At our last cooking lesson, Ashlee had to chop the onions by hand. We made an excellent and quick 4 cheese pasta. I will include the recipe at the end of this post. She did a fantastic job of chopping the onions, but didn’t like it one bit. She was appalled that I did not have a handy dandy chopper do-dad gadget thing-a-ma-bob. Today when I met her for lunch she surprised me with a the all-in-one handy dandy chopper thingy. Of course as soon as I got home I had to test it out. I didn’t have any onions to chop tonight, so it was cheese or strawberries. I thought the chopped up strawberries would go great with some granola and yogurt so I began to chop away. It worked out great. Thanks Ash.

Baked Four Cheese Pasta 

This quick pasta dish is especially easy - you don’t need to boil a large pot of water, since the pasta is cooked right in the sauce.

Serves 4 people

Ingredients:

• 4 slices of bacon - chopped fine (I LOVE bacon so I always add a whole thing of bacon)
• 1 small onion - chopped fine
• 2 garlic cloves - minced
• 3 cups low-sodium chicken broth
• 1 cup heavy cream
• 3/4 pound penne or ziti pasta (about 4 cups)
• Table Salt
• 1/2 cup grated fresh Parmesan cheese
• 1 cup frozen peas
• Ground black pepper
• 1 1/2 cups shredded Italian four-cheese blend pre packaged (I prefer to shred my own Italian cheese such as: Fontina, Mozzarella, Provolone, Gorgonzola, Pecorino Romano, Grana Padano)

1. Adjust oven rack to upper-middle position and heat oven to 500 degrees.
2. Cook bacon, onion and garlic in a large nonstick skillet over medium heat until onion is softened. (about 5-7 minutes) (I use a Staub cookware, that way it can go directly into the oven)
3. Add cream, broth, pasta and 1/2 teaspoon of salt. Cover and bring to a boil
4. Once boiling, reduce heat to medium-low and simmer, stirring frequently, until pasta is tender. (about 15 minutes)
5. Remove from heat, stir in Parmesan and frozen peas. Season with salt and pepper.
6. Transfer to a 2-quart casserole dish and mix in a 1/2 cup of the shredded cheese.
7. Sprinkle the remaining  1 cup of shredded cheese on the top of the pasta.
8. Bake until the cheese is melted and spotty brown (about 7 minutes)