Asparagus, Pancetta, Shallots and Feta Pasta

Yesterday I made the most delicious pasta in the history of my pasta making. Seriously, Laura (S.) remember that bacon tomato pasta sauce? Yeah, this is better.

Let's jump right in, shall we? This is easy enough that anyone who likes pasta and has a half an hour should try it out. You can use this pasta cooking technique for almost any combination of vegetable and cheese that you like, and if you're a vegetarian you can, of course, forgo the pancetta.

Ingredients: Olive oil, salt, pepper, pancetta, chicken broth, pasta, asparagus, shallots, feta cheese

Get out a medium pot, or any kind of pan with high-ish sides. Whatever vegetable you want to add should be cooked and cut into pieces roughly similar to the size of the pasta you have chosen. This dish works best with pasta like penne, rigatoni, farfalle or rotini. You're going to start by crisping up your chopped pancetta in the bottom of the pan (the pieces should be not too big, not too small). Keep the stove between medium and high, you shouldn't need to adjust the heat at all throughout the recipe. Once the pancetta is crisped and browned take it out of the pan and set it aside (you'll be using it soon enough). Make sure you don't pour it out, because you want that yummy fat in the pan to brown your shallots.

The shallots should be sliced thin before you toss them in the pan. Stir and flip them around so they get nicely covered in the fat, and if you've added it, the olive oil. You don't want them to get too brown to fast, so if they start to get to hot pull the pan of the burner and shake them around a bit. To get it right you can pull it off the burner and put it back as much as you'd like. After a couple of minutes they should have softened and will start to look cooked. At this point you should put the pasta in the pan with the shallots, stirring and tossing for a minute until they are slightly toasted and covered in oil/fat. Yum.

Add chicken broth to the pan until the pasta is just covered. This should be enough that after the broth has been absorbed, the pasta will be cooked through (but not overdone). Make sure you stir it frequently so the pasta cooks evenly.

While the pasta is cooking, and in between stirring, you chop up the feta cheese. When the pasta is almost done, add the asparagus and mix it in. When the liquid is almost completely gone and the pasta is cooked, pour it into the dish in which you'll be serving, topping it with the feta and pancetta from earlier. Don't salt it too much, the cheese and pancetta should give it plenty of flavor already.

Then you're ready to eat! Doesn't cooking it this way make up a nice sauce for the pasta? Really rich and tasty. Next time I might add some lemon juice to the chicken broth, and top it with zest afterward. I think the original recipe called for that but I was too lazy to zest a lemon last night.