Bacon, spinach and blue cheese pasta

This is such a tasty and simple pasta dish to make and includes a useful tip for those ends of blue cheese that can get a bit of a rind I simply freeze the end bits and use them for this dish or a blue cheese sauce to go with a piece of steak. It may also be a meal where you have most of the ingredients already in your frig.

One thought – if you don’t like blue cheese, don’t make this dish!

This is also a dish that is perfect for three of the four seasons, in fact I would still it enjoy it in peak summer, it’s that quick to make and so tasty!

Ingredients

250 gms/half a packet of seashell pasta – you could use a penne but have some fun with seashell/ conchiglie or similar. It works really well with the ingredients of this pasta

1 tbs olive oil

1 onion, diced quite fine

6 rashes of streaky bacon or as many as you can fit into your large non-stick frypan

250 mls vegetable or chicken stock – heated

250 gms/half a packet of frozen baby peas

Approx. 100gms of whatever blue cheese you like – I generally use the “cheap” creamy blue you can buy in foil in the supermarket. Or ends of blue that you’ve frozen! Works perfectly

100 gms of baby spinach (most of a packet)

 Cooking instructions

1. Bring a pot of water to the boil and cook the conchiglie/ seashells as per the packet instructions (about 5-6 mins)
2. In a non-stick frypan, gently cook the bacon, increasing the heat until the rashes are starting to crisp up. Remove and place on handee towel
3. In the same frypan, heat the oil, add the onion and cook on a medium heat until it has softened. Pour in the warm stock and bring to the boil. Simmer for a few minutes until the liquid has reduced slightly
4. Stir in the peas, followed by the blue cheese until the blue cheese has melted and the peas are defrosted
5. Break up the bacon into pieces and add to the pan
6. Mix in the drained pasta and add the baby spinach leaves, toss through and serve!

 If you would prefer to save a step, you can cook the onions first in the olive oil until they start to soften and then add the bacon (cut into small pieces) and cook together for around 5 minutes, add the stock etc

Serves 4