Bacon & Broccoli Pasta

Butter melting in the pan. Can't you just smell the deliciousness?

As many of you know, I’m a big fan of Giada DeLaurentiis’s cookbooks. Recently, I took her recipe for anchovy and broccoli farfalle and substituted the anchovies with bacon. It turned out to be out-of-this-world AMAZING. I love it so much that I’ve made it three times in the last month and a half.

And you know what else? It is SO easy to make. I’m a slow cook and even I can make this in under 30 minutes, which is ideal for a quick weeknight meal. My recipe below is pretty true to the original, though I’ve cut the amount of olive oil and butter since the bacon contributes a significant amount of grease (yum). You can cut out the olive oil and butter altogether, but I think that both add important (i.e. frickin’ delicious) flavors to the dish.  A healthier alternative is to cook the bacon beforehand and drain it on paper towels before adding it back to the main dish.

A plate full of YUM.

Bacon & Broccoli Pasta (yields 4 servings; 3 if you’re a pig like me)

INGREDIENTS:
1 box Farfalle (bow-tie) pasta
2 crowns broccoli, rinsed and cut to small florets
5 slices center-cut bacon (thick cut preferred), cut into 1/2 inch slices
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 T olive oil
1 T butter
1 tsp crushed red pepper
salt and pepper to taste
grated Parmesan cheese

1. Bring salted water to a boil. Add pasta and cook for 5 minutes. Add broccoli florets to boiling pasta and cook for another 4-5 minutes. Drain and reserve ~1 cup of the pasta water for later use.
2. Heat olive oil and butter in a large pan over med-high heat. When butter is melted, add garlic, red pepper, and bacon. Cook until bacon is done, stirring occasionally.
3. Add drained pasta & broccoli to the pan. Reduce heat to med/med-low. Thoroughly mix bacon, broccoli, and pasta. Add salt and black pepper to taste. If pasta looks dry, moisten with reserved pasta water.
4. Sprinkle with grated Parmesan cheese. Serve and enjoy!

The only “problem” with this dish is that I can’t stop eating it. Hope y’all like it as much as I do!

Sunday Night Dinners: A New Tradition

I love cooking but I hate cooking for myself. That’s why I recently decided to start having mini-dinner parties about once a month. For my first “Sunday Night Dinner,” I had M & K over, my Rivoli dining companions.

We were experiencing very warm temperatures in Berkeley, so I opted for a light, summery menu. (Translation: as little stove/actual cooking time as possible!) As I had never prepared a 3-course meal before, I also wanted to keep it simple.  I knew I could rely on my favorite cookbook author, Giada De Laurentiis, for simple and delicious dishes.  All of the recipes that I chose were from Giada’s Everyday Italian cookbook, some of which can also be found on the Food Network website.

To start, I made Caprese salad. The organic heirloom tomatoes were what really made this dish stand out. It was very good but next time, I will add some balsamic vinegar, to add a bit more flavor.

Caprese Salad: visually and gastronomically tasty!

For the main course, I had intended on making pasta with what I thought would be a light shrimp tomato sauce. However, the light tomato sauce ended up being more like a soup (almost like cioppino).  So I ended up serving the components of the main course separately.

Lemon spaghetti with grilled baby asparagus.

Shrimp fra diavolo. So good, and really easy too!

Keeping with the summery theme, I prepared a seasonal fruit salad with a twist: following Giada’s recipe, I poured a white wine reduction, with sugar and mint added, over the chopped fruit.  I made a very similar fruit salad for a potluck last week and I’ve renamed it, “Fancy boozy fruit salad.” I think it makes it more fun, don’t you?

Nectarine, peach, and strawberries, served in my recently acquired half-martini glasses. Ooh la la!

Of course, what would a fancy dinner be without wine? M & K didn’t disappoint with a lovely bottle of rosé from Chateau Saint Pierre.  As usual, I neglected to remember to take a photo of the wine until the bottle was empty.

A very distinctive bottle for a very distinctive wine.

All in all, a very successful and yummy dinner. The thing that made my meal complete, however, was the fact that my guests volunteered to do the dishes. (Honestly, they volunteered! I didn’t make them!!)

Working for their dinner.

A Fine Roast

Roast salmon and root vegetables with couscous

Recently, I was craving root vegetables (parsnips, potatoes, and carrots) when I came across a recipe for herb-roasted root vegetables from my favorite cookbook author, Giada De Laurentiis.  I have two of her cookbooks: Everyday Pasta and Everyday Italian.  I love them both because the recipes are so easy to follow and well-written that I could probably repeat the same recipe without referring to the book.  More importantly, just about every recipe I’ve ever attempted has resulted in deliciousness.  (Also, this isn’t the first time I’ve posted a dish from her cookbooks.)

This particular roasted root vegetable dish called for carrots, parsnips, sweet potato, and brussel sprouts, seasoned with olive oil and Italian herbs.  Sticking with the roasting theme, I made the “Salmon baked in foil” which was, you guessed it, salmon baked in foil packets.  The best part of this foil packet dish was the diced tomato-shallot salsa that cooks with the salmon.  It was simply divine; I could have eaten an entire bowl of the stuff with a loaf of crusty bread.

Being the carb-lover I am, I had to balance the meal out with some noodles or rice.  I had a box of couscous in my pantry, which ended up complementing the salmon quite well.

Oh, bonus photo!  I thought I had taken a photo of something else I cooked from Giada’s cookbooks, and indeed, I found it!  Taken all the way back in August, here is a photo of “Rigatoni with Sausage, Artichokes, and Asparagus,” which actually brings me to the only pet peeve I have with the cookbooks — recipe titles are sometimes misleading.  For instance, this particular dish also has sun-dried tomatoes in it.  But why aren’t sun-dried tomatoes in the title?  Nor are they listed in the index.   A more glaring misnomer is her recipe for “Penne in Spicy Tomato Sauce”… also known to everyone else as puttanesca.  But it’s a small price to pay for an otherwise great cookbook.

Penne with sausage, asparagus, artichokes, AND sun-dried tomatoes, topped with freshly grated Parmesan.