Trout on rustic pesto pasta with pancetta and peas.

First meal inspired by my flight back home from Vancouver (engrossed in the Food Network for hours!). My husband picked up a piece of trout when we were grocery shopping yesterday so I decided that this would be what I made to go with it. He was in charge of cooking his fish; salt, pepper and olive oil, in a hot oven for about 10minutes or until done! Why do anything more to a perfectly good piece of fish!? And good it was!

The first thing I did for the other part of the meal was get some pancetta cubes crisping, when they were ready I turned the heat off and left them until the very end. 

I cooked some penne pasta and added frozen peas to the water a few minutes before it was done so that it was all ready at the same time. I made a pesto out of spinach, parsley, walnuts, parmesan cheese, garlic, salt, pepper, cream and lemon zest and juice. To begin with I wilted some spinach in a colander with boiling water. It was about 3/4-1 cup of wilted spinach. I chopped this up quite a bit then put it in a bowl. To this I added about 1/3-1/2 cup of chopped parsley and maybe 1/3 cup chopped walnuts. I grated some parmesan to go in, about 1/3 cup again. Then I grated the zest off 1/4 lemon and used the juice of half of it, added some salt and pepper, a couple of tbsps of chopped garlic and maybe 1/4-1/3 cup of olive oil. I only have a hand held pulveriser/blender, the kind you would use to blend soups with. If you have a food processor it would deal with this instantly! I however was getting nowhere fast, so I added some cream to loosen it up a bit, about 1/3-1/2 cup, and this seemed to help. Once it was fairly pastey I stopped, a few bits of leafy matter or crunch of nuts isn't a bad thing. 

I put the creamy pesto into the hot pan that the pasta and peas had just come out of and started to warm it through. I then added the pasta and peas into the sauce and tossed it all around until it was evenly coated and warmed through. The final touch is adding the crispy pancetta bits to it. 

The sauce was so fresh with the spinach and herbs and lemon, and the taste of walnuts came through ever so slightly. The pancetta added that bit of salt and richness to it in contrast with the sweet peas. It all made a wonderful bed for some fresh roasted trout to be served on. It would make a wonderful meal in it's own without the fish or even without the pancetta for a vegetarian. The glorious colours are so enticing.