Fried Prosciutto Tortellini

Junior year begins. The apartment. The kitchen. The level burners, patient and waiting. I unpacked in two hours — three years of practice has made the unpacking efficient, the way Mama made the Monday jambalaya efficient, the way MawMaw Shirley made everything efficient: through repetition, through knowing where things go without thinking about where things go.

Classes: Organic Chemistry (the sequence everyone dreads), Biology 3040 (Microbiology), Physics 2001 (the pre-med requirement), and a creative nonfiction workshop with Dr. Barrios. The course load is the heaviest yet. The courses are the hardest yet. Junior year is where pre-med becomes real — the organic chemistry gauntlet, the physics reckoning, the microbiology deep dive — and the realness is both intimidating and clarifying. This is what I came for. This is the part where the work gets hard enough to prove you mean it.

The study group reconvened — Marcus, Priya, Destiny, Jasmine, Amir. Same table, third floor library. We are juniors now. The table feels different — not because it changed but because we did. Freshman year we were nervous. Sophomore year we were competent. Junior year we are serious. The seriousness is in the way we sit, the way we open our books, the way we look at each other across the table with the mutual recognition that this year matters more than the others because this year contains the MCAT and the MCAT contains the future.

First meal in the apartment: red beans and rice. The canonical first meal. The ritual. MawMaw Shirley's recipe, Mama's efficiency, my kitchen, my pot, my hands. The beans soaked overnight, the Trinity chopped at my counter — MY counter, I will never tire of saying this — and the apartment filled with the smell of red beans and the smell was home and home was the apartment and the apartment was mine and the cooking was the claiming. I claim this kitchen. I claim this year. I claim the future that is sitting at the end of this semester and the next semester and the MCAT and the application, waiting for me to arrive. I am arriving. One bowl of red beans at a time.

The red beans lasted three days, which is how MawMaw Shirley designed it — cook once, eat with intention all week. By Thursday the pot was empty and the apartment still smelled faintly of the Trinity, and I needed something fast, something that still felt like a real meal and not a concession to the course load. Fried prosciutto tortellini is what I made. It takes one pan and twenty minutes and it is the kind of thing you figure out when you have actually learned how to use a kitchen — when the kitchen is yours and you are not guessing anymore, just cooking.

Prep Time: 5 min | Cook Time: 15 min | Total Time: 20 min | Servings: 4

Ingredients

1 package (20 oz) refrigerated cheese tortellini
4 oz prosciutto, torn into bite-sized pieces
3 tablespoons olive oil, divided
3 cloves garlic, minced
1/4 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes
1/4 cup freshly grated Parmesan cheese
2 tablespoons fresh parsley, chopped
Salt and black pepper, to taste

Instructions

Cook the tortellini. Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil. Cook tortellini according to package directions until just al dente. Drain and set aside, reserving 1/4 cup of pasta water.
Crisp the prosciutto. Heat 1 tablespoon of olive oil in a large skillet over medium-high heat. Add the prosciutto pieces in a single layer and cook for 2—3 minutes, turning once, until crisp and slightly golden. Transfer to a paper towel-lined plate and set aside.
Build the pan sauce. Reduce heat to medium. Add the remaining 2 tablespoons of olive oil to the same skillet. Add garlic and red pepper flakes and sauté for about 60 seconds until fragrant, taking care not to burn the garlic.
Pan-fry the tortellini. Add the drained tortellini to the skillet in a single layer. Press down gently and let cook undisturbed for 2—3 minutes until the bottoms are lightly golden and crisp. Toss and cook another 1—2 minutes on the other side. Add a splash of reserved pasta water if the pan looks dry.
Finish and serve. Return the crisped prosciutto to the pan and toss everything together. Season with salt and black pepper. Plate immediately, topped with Parmesan and fresh parsley.

Nutrition (per serving)

Fried Prosciutto Tortellini — Another Night in My Kitchen, Another Meal I Made Mine