Think On It

Goat Cheese-Bacon Pasta

April 10th, 2008

Here I am again, not only with pasta, which I am not supposed to be eating, but with a pasta so easy you don’t need a cooking teacher. If I keep this up I won’t be able to afford pasta for myself.

I had fresh goat cheese left over from a dinner I made on Monday evening. This goat cheese is not the little one with a soft white crust, but really fresh, like cream cheese only tastier by far. I kept staring at it and trying to get it to tell me how to eat it without carbohydrates, but alas, that innocent looking goat kept saying, “No way! I want bread or pasta.” So then I had to think some more on what would be nice with goat cheese. What wouldn’t be nice with goat cheese? I am such a fool. I pulled out some diced smoked bacon and said, “This week it’s you!”

I am using up this unfortunate pasta called lumache. Lumache means snails, ergh. Pasta lumache can be fortunate, but this particular one doesn’t cook evenly and one part starts to shred before the other part has stopped being crunchy. In the spirit of not wasting the resources used to make food, I am eating it, although with regret. So the first thing I did was look at the package to see how long they say to cook it. It usually takes a minute less time, I find.

Check your age and height. If you are over seven you can make this pasta. If you are tall enough to reach the top of the cooker while standing on a chair, you are allowed as long as someone grownup is in the kitchen to help with heavy stuff and draining big pots of boiling stuff. Tell that grownup to make a nice salad while he waits to do his part.

Look at your pasta package. If it says it takes 12 minutes, this pasta will be done in 12 minutes, including the minute it spends in the cheese pan after draining. Get the big pot of water boiling. It helps if you put a lid on it until it boils.

Goat Cheese-Bacon Pasta

for one, just multiply for as many as you are feeding

100 grams or 3-1/2 ounces of chunky pasta (spaghetti and noodles aren’t so great for this)
30 grams or 1 ounce diced smoked bacon or pancetta
40 grams or a little over an ounce of fresh goat cheese
Liberal amounts of freshly ground pepper

Put some but not much salt into the boiling water and then the pasta. My goat cheese is a bit salty and so is bacon, so we keep the salt down in the pasta.

In a frying pan, fry the diced bacon until it starts to brown, then ladle some of the pasta water into the pan to get the browned bits off the pan bottom. Leave it to simmer until the pasta is done. Because this is a creamy pasta, cook it a little less than normal. The very moment the pasta stops being crunchy, drain it and toss it into the bacon pan, then drop the goat cheese on top and stir it all together for a minute. Scrape it into a pasta bowl and grind fresh pepper over it and eat it while the smoke is still coming off into the spring air.

I would have liked a salad of maché with a lemon vinaigrette, but my cook was too lazy. So instead I photographed it and decided to send it off as a spring offering for Presto Pasta Night.

If you are over 15 years old, you should cut and paste this whole post and share it with someone younger, offering to be the big person in the kitchen with him. Remember the story of the lion and the mouse. Or was it an elephant?

Entry Filed under: Italy, cheese, pasta, primo, Italian food, recipes, easy, cookery, bacon, pancetta