Pasta Shells in white sauce with Sausage, Mushrooms and Peas!

This is a really simple and easy Pasta recipe. I've always enjoyed the Chicken Alfredo pasta served at Restaurants. Manish wasn't a huge pasta fan until I started preparing Pasta at home. Initially I used to flavor it with Indian spices and slowly progressed it to proper Italian flavored Pasta dishes and now Manish too loves Pasta prepared any style ! :-)

I wanted to have some restaurant style pasta at home one day, so simply searched few online sites and recipe ideas and finally decided on making this. Must say, it came out pretty well but I would have liked to season it a bit more. For seasoning ideas, you may add red chilli flakes or dried oregano to the mushroom, sausage and peas mixture. Or you may add seasonings to the white paste sauce.

I took the pics in a hurry, so that I could eat while the pasta was still hot :-) , so please bear with my pics.
My white sauce is not exactly an Alfredo sauce , so I'm just going to refer to it as white sauce. To prepare Alfredo sauce you should skip the all-purpose flour in the preparation. But it tasted really good nevertheless.

Pasta Shells in white sauce with Sausage, Mushrooms and Peas Recipe
Recipe source : My own
You'll need
Shell Pasta  - 2 cups ( or you can use any kind you like)
Water ( enough to boil pasta)
Sausages - 2 ( I used chicken franks)
Mushroom - 2 cups ( sliced)
Green peas - 1 cup
Red Onion - 1/2 cup ( chopped into small cubes)
Olive oil - 3 tblsp
Salt - to taste
For White Sauce:
Butter - 2 tblsp
Heavy Cream - 1/2 cup
Milk - 1/2 cup ( or you may substitute both cream & milk with 1cup half and half )
All purpose flour - 2 tsp
Parmesan cheese - 2 tblsp (grated)
Salt - to taste
Pepper powder - a pinch
Garlic powder - 1/2 tsp


Directions
1. Boil water and once it starts bubbling , add salt and then the Pasta Shells. (add enough salt such that the water tastes salty, this will help flavor the pasta)
2. Add 1 tblsp of olive oil in the water ( this helps the pasta from not sticking to each other )
3. Meanwhile , in a frying pan heat 2 tblsp of olive oil. Cut the sausage into small cubes and fry the sausages.
4. Keep aside the fried sausage cubes and add onions into the pan and saute them till they turn pink.
5. Add the mushrooms and green peas and some salt to taste.
6. Once the mushrooms are mildly cooked add the sausage cubes, mix well and keep aside.
To prepare the white sauce:
1.Heat a nonstick pan and melt the butter.
2. Add the all purpose flour and keep stirring to avoid any lumps being formed.
3. Reduce heat and add the cream and milk or half n half and keep stirring till the sauce thickens, then add the freshly grated parmesan cheese. Season with salt, pepper and garlic powder up to your taste.
4. Once the Pasta Shells are cooked al dente ,meaning , pasta should still be slightly chewy and not overcooked) drain the excess water and add the pasta into the white sauce. (The all-purpose flour in the white sauce tends to thicken the sauce )
5. You may add some pasta water if required to loosen the pasta-sauce mixture and keep on low heat.
6. Mix in the sausage, mushrooms and peas. Mix well and turn off the heat.

I did not coat the pasta with too much white sauce, but it tasted great just the same. You can mix more sauce if you'd like. Its best served hot.
Manish really enjoyed having this and I was just so glad it turned out well. :-)

Enjoy your Holidays!!

-Manju