Pasta dish with bacon

Pasta with bacon and vegetables

 Another culinary creation using ingredients to hand because we didn’t shop.  It is interesting how this approach often leads to great results.  But, as they say, necessity is the mother of invention.

So I had a packet of bacon, some alfredo pasta sauce (nearing its expiry date), one tomato, one green chilli, ½ a red onion, lots of garlic, ½ a red and yellow capsicum (bell peppers to some of you).  Ginger corn on the cob and some cauliflower.

I chopped the vegetables up while my better half fried the bacon – very competently I must say.

I put the corn in boiling water for 10 minutes, adding the cauliflower broken up into florets in the last 4 minutes or so.  Once the time was up I spooned the veges out and kept the water to use for cooking the pasta.  I didn’t want to waste any of the good stuff!

I then fried off the onion in the fat from the bacon (the bacon was set aside to be added again later).  After 3 or so minutes I added the finely sliced ginger and garlic. Because I had a lot of garlic on hand I used about 10 cloves – but you could alter that to as much or as little as suits.

Once that was softened, I added the capsicum (bell peppers) which I had thinly sliced together with some freshly ground white pepper (which was pounded up in my small mortar and pestle).  I used about 2 ½ teaspoons – so the end result was very spicy.  Use 1 teaspoon if you aren’t as besotted with pepper as me.  I also added a spoonful or two of some chilli relish I had in the fridge – you could use chilli sauce, or sweet chilli sauce instead.

While this was all going on, I had re-heated the water and put the pasta in for 11 minutes from boiling.  I used dried penne – but any sort would be fine.

For the last 3 minutes of the pasta’s time I put the bacon back into the pan with the vegetables and added the wedges of tomato.  I only added a smidgeon of salt – the bacon provides a lot of the salt taste already.

So I put the bacon mixture into a serving bowl and sprinkled a few crunchy fried shallots on top (optional – available from asian stores in jars pre-prepared).  In a separate serving bowl the drained rice with ½ the pot of alfredo sauce warmed through.  I chose not to mix it all together for aesthetic reasons.  And it also means you can serve yourself only the portion of pasta and sauce that you think you should have.

For another recipe, click here.



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