Tag Archives: blue cheese

Rich and Creamy Tomato Bacon Pasta

I love it. It may be artery-clogging material, but I’ll make up for it by eating my greens and by faithfully attending my Monday workout, which has already created one new muscle on my left leg called ‘Fred.’ It’s all about balance–I like to compensate for things (read: ‘bacon’) rather than cutting them out, as you may have guessed if you have visited some of my other heavy whipping cream and blue cheese-laden recipes.

This dish is quick to whip up, and dreadfully satisfying to dig into. And even though I’m calling it “rich” in the title, I must emphasize to you that IT IS VERY RICH. You won’t need a ton of sauce to go over your bowl of pasta. Oh, and it’s delicious as well over white rice, which is how I chose to consume the abundant leftovers.

My husband loved it. I loved it. Will you you love it, too? I say there’s a 99% chance if you’re in my immediate family, but a 0% chance if you’re my cousin Luke and can’t eat the pasta (gluten intolerant) or the sauce (lactose intolerant).

Let’s dive in! Get ready for a swim on the dangerous side of sauce.

Ingredients

(Serves 5)

1 lb cooked farfalle pasta

1 lb bacon

1 large onion, roughly chopped

3 TBS dry sherry or wine

1-26 oz can spaghetti sauce*

1 c heavy whipping cream

2 TBS crème fraîche

3/4 c blue cheese crumbles

salt, to taste

1/2 tsp sugar, to taste

generous amounts of black pepper

cilantro or herbs, to garnish

*you can use plain tomato sauce; just add some brown sugar, garlic and dry herbs to create your own flavor

First, chop up and sauté that bacon in a deep skillet over medium-high heat.

While the bacon is cooking, give the onion a rough dice. Once the bacon starts getting brown, add the onion and continue to sauté until the onion is softened.

This whole process can take a while, maybe 12 minutes or so . . . I wasn’t counting.

Now it’s time to drain the excess grease out of the pan. There’s a lot, and we don’t want this sauce to precipitate an immediate trip to the hospital. Grab your baster and suck out the good stuff. I mean, the bad stuff.

Good, bad, bad, good–it’s all just so relative.

Look at all this grease we have successfully discarded:

Now, add the sherry and deglaze the pan, scraping up any brown bits.

Let it boil away a little, for 2-3 minutes.

Add the spaghetti sauce.

I used a dented can from Big Jake, but you can use any kind, really. And if you’re against premade spaghetti sauce, use regular tomato sauce with some spices (garlic powder, salt and pepper, thyme, oregano, some sugar).

Cover the pan and let the sauce simmer on medium-low for about 10-12 minutes. If you are by chance using diced tomatoes instead of tomato sauce, you want to leave the pan uncovered and increase the cooking time here, so that the majority of the liquid boils off.

Now it’s time to throw caution to the winds. Grab that crème fraîche:

And eat some! Seriously, it’s part of the recipe.

See the finger swipes? If you have any sense at all for who I am as a person, you knew this was inevitable.

Add the sugar, cream, crème fraîche, blue cheese, and salt and pepper to taste.

A good substitution for crème fraîche if your grocery store doesn’t carry it is sour cream mixed with mascarpone. Stir the whole creamy mess until everything is incorporated and heated through. Dip in your spoon and take a taste, then adjust the seasonings to your liking. I happened to need more salt . . .

. . . and also more pepper.

Also, if you are a blue cheese hater (I know who you are . . . and have forgiven you. I think.) you can totally skip adding the blue cheese and just add some more crème fraîche or something. I happen to be a blue cheese lover, and I added even MORE! I was in the mood to totally rock my own palate.

And here we have the sauce, in all its perfection. And richness.

Here we reach a fork in the road: if you take the path to the right, you could dump your cooked pasta into the sauce. However, I would advise against that namely because the sauce is so rich that you may not want that much with your pasta. Take the path to the left and leave it up to each individual eater to choose the amount of sauce they feel capable of handling.

Garnish with parsley, cilantro, basil, or whatever herb floats your boat.

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Spinach Blue Cheese Pasta

The platform for this recipe is PW’s Pasta with Tomato Blue-Cheese Sauce. I’ve made versions of it many times since she posted it in April, and it’s kind of morphed into something different, with spinach featuring as a main ingredient, a blend of spices I adore, and some dry sherry. Guys, if you like blue cheese, this is a MUST. The photo does not do it justice–trust me and make it immediately. In fact, I’m going to go ahead and apologize for the photography since this was one of the 1st recipes I took pictures of while cooking. Ignore the weird color balance and just believe me when I say that this is the crowning jewel of pasta recipes in my book. The only chopping involved is the garlic, so it creates minimal dishes (always a perk).

Ingredients

(2 servings)

1 TBS olive oil

6 cloves garlic

1-14.5 oz. can diced tomatoes

1 tsp brown sugar

1/4 tsp salt

1/4 tsp black pepper

1/2 tsp granulated toasted onion

1/8 tsp white pepper

1/4 c dry sherry (or red wine)

1/3 c crumbled blue cheese

1/3 c heavy cream

1/2 bag (4.5 oz.) spinach

1/2 lb cooked pasta, to serve

Optional and evil: garlic croutons, for sprinkling on top

If you start boiling your water first of all, the spinach sauce should be done right before you have to drain the pasta.

Heat olive oil in a non-stick pan over medium-high heat. Add your garlic, and fry about 1 minute, until fragrant.

Add the whole can of tomatoes, juice and all. Turn the heat up to high and add your sugar, salt, peppers, and toasted onion granules (if you don’t have this, you could try substituting a mix of dried onion and onion powder … or onion salt, and cut the 1/4 tsp salt).

Cook for 10 minutes, stirring frequently–the liquid should all but evaporate. Once the liquid is almost all gone, add your sherry (you can turn off the flame temporarily for safety). Let it simmer over medium-high heat for a minute or two.

Reduce the heat to medium-low, and add your blue cheese.

See how the liquid was pretty much gone?

Stir until melted. Add the cream, and stir to incorporate.

 If you taste it at this point, it will seem a little overseasoned, but once the spinach goes in everything will make sense. Turn the heat down a little further and add the spinach. It will look like way too much, but don’t worry–it cooks down fast.

Stir as it wilts. . .

. . . and take it off the heat after about 1-2 minutes. Hopefully your pasta is about done by now:

Fresh pasta! There’s nothin’ like it.

So serve it on up! Unhealthy but delicious idea: once I sprinkled garlicky croutons on top. The crunch with the wilted spinach and al dente pasta was divine.

Click here for printer-friendly version: Spinach Blue Cheese Pasta