One for the record recipe books!!
I recently acquired 1/2 lb. thick-cut applewood smoked bacon. I am not going to tell you how — just trust me when I say I did. Just kidding, I wanted to sound all tough and like I know stuff…but I am really not and I don’t. Well, I know stuff…about bacon. For instance, when you purchase your bacon from a man who stands behind a butcher’s counter it is like buying a cookie from a baker and Krispy Kreme when the red light is on … well you get the picture. It is so much better than when it’s sold in a shrink-wrapped package under fluorescent lighting. What makes bacon better? I really don’t know “what”, I just know it “is”. So that’s the inspiration for this recipe — bacon at the butcher’s counter. So the moral of the story, buy bacon from a butcher.
Once I got my hands on my bacon, I couldn’t stop thinking about bacon + pappardelle + asparagus. Today was the day they all met in a tasty white wine cream sauce and it was good, it was great — so much so that it must be recorded for future generations menus.
In an effort to lighten the recipe without totally stealing all of the saucy richness, I subbed chicken broth and a good white wine for 2/3 of the sauce liquid. This makes the recipe a little more moody than it would have been if I had used all cream. ((Cream won’t break, meaning the milk fats and milk proteins hold together much tighter in cream than in any other lighter version of milk…well cream may break if you are rough with it — but isn’t that true for all of us?)) In light of lightening it up (haha), I had to do a few extra things I wouldn’t normally do – and that made a few extra dishes dirty, but whatever.
1 – I added the asparagus and the spring peas to the broth & wine for 3 minutes — then removed them from the liquid and set them aside so they wouldn’t over cook.
2 – I continued cooking the bacon and onions in a separate braiser in an effort to render out more fat and crisp the bacon more.
3 – I added 2 T of ‘Heart Spicy Brown’ Grey Poupon mustard to the sauce as an extra emulsifying agent (it helps keep the sauce from breaking).
4 – I kept a close eye on the sauce, raising and lowering the cooking heat to ensure the sauce didn’t break.
5 – I added 1/2 c of pasta water to the sauce and then added the cooked pasta directly to the sauce. Both of these steps were done in an effort to thicken the sauce with the pasta water starches rather adding more cream to thicken.
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