Cooking with Philly

I bought some Philadelphia Cooking Crème Italian Cheese and Herb the other day because I had a coupon. I like coupons. I saw the commercials on TV and I thought I would give it a try. It has a peel off recipe idea list on the lid, but before I looked at the recipes I thought I would make Pasta Primavera with chicken and the crème. When I did look at them there was one that had bacon in it. I love bacon. It’s probably one of the reasons why I couldn’t become a vegetarian. It’s just soo tasty. 

 Creamy Bacon Fettuccine has bacon, red onions, milk, peas and fettuccine. I also included a bag of frozen veggies and some chicken. I pretty much just combined the two together since I had a chicken breast thawing and I was planning on buying frozen veggie blend. While the water was boiling for the noodles, I did my prep work on the onion, bacon and chicken.   I also added garlic because I need to use up my garlic supply.  The onion I had on hand was yellow and not red, so I used that instead and I put the veggies in after I cooked the onion for a little bit.

 Bacon is really a pain to cut up into pieces and I haven’t figured out a technique to cut it with a knife without wiggling around. The best way I found to break it up is to use kitchen shears. It also helps if the meat is still slightly frozen.  Barry and I can’t go through a whole package of bacon together without it going to waste. So what I usually do is freeze them in a single layer on a cookie and then put them in a Ziploc bag and then I can just pull out a couple slices at time. When I was cooking the bacon, I fried the chicken pieces with it. The chicken was darn tasty. Be careful not to burn yourself when drain the bacon fat. Bacon fat can get really hot when messing with it.

 They make the instructions easy to follow. There are only 3 steps really. Make sure you don’t fall behind or your pasta will get done too early or even worse overcooked. After draining, the pasta will start to cool and the starches will make the noodles start sticking to each other. Don’t add oil to the noodles or the sauce won’t stick to them. I finished the plate with a sprinkle of shredded parmesan. 

After trying this I didn’t think to myself, “WOW, Philly is onto something”.   I could see this as a quick come together meal for a family.  Since I added veggies to it you could serve breadsticks with it and a spinach salad.  Paired it with a nice tall glass of milk, it would make a good healthy meal. 

 You could also add the spinach to the pasta and it will just wilt in.  There are other flavors in the crème collection: Original, Savory Garlic and Santa Fe Blend.  I’m sure I will try it again, maybe the Santa Fe Blend, and create that WOW dish. 

Recipe Ingredients

6 slices Bacon cut into ½ inch thick slices

½ cup chopped red onion

1 tub Philadelphia Italian Cheese & Herb Cooking Crème

½ cup milk

1 cup frozen peas

½ lb fettuccine, cooked

Cook bacon in large skillet until crisp. Remove bacon from skillet with slotted spoon, reserving 2 tbsp. drippings in skillet.  Drain bacon on paper towels.

Stir onions into drippings; cook and stir 3 min. or until crisp –tender. Add cooking crème, milk and peas; cook and stir 3 min.

Add bacon and pasta; stir to coat

Recipes for this creme and other 3