I love soup, as is evidenced here, here, and here. So, with the leftovers from this recipe I made soup. Wonderful, soul-healing soup. Jesus, I love soup.
Ingredients
3 stalks of celery, diced (I have to dice it super-small because I hate the texture so)
1 medium onion, diced
3 carrots, diced
6 cups chicken broth (use the canned or make your own)
4 - 5 ounces bacon, cut in bite-size pieces
1 cup of frozen corn (or fresh, if you're not just throwing this together with what you have around)
2 - 3 cups cooked cannellini beans
1 tbs olive oil
salt and pepper to taste
I've said this dozens of times, but my love of soup comes partly from the fact that you.can't.screw.it.up. You just can't.
Saute the vegetables in olive oil. Add a pinch of salt to help them soften. When the onions are translucent, add the bacon. As I used bulk bacon, there wasn't much fat to render. But if your bacon is fatty (and most bacon it), let the fat melt off it and then dump it out of the pan.
Once the bacon is browned a little bit, add the rest of the ingredients. Bring the soup to a boil. Then turn the heat to low and let it simmer until you feel like eating it. The longer you cook it, the most your beans will burst open and give you a faux-cream flavor. A delicious one, if I may be so bold. Season to taste.
Vote, vote, vote, please.
Tuesday, August 3, 2010
pasta with pancetta and cannellini beans
Well, folks, this recipe ended up being a bit of a wreck. Don't get me wrong, it was tasty enough. But it seemed like God was tossing up roadblocks all over the path to deliciousness. Let me explain.
First, I couldn't get my hands on any pancetta. Or proscuitto. The butcher was clean out of it. I mean, they had some pre-sliced. But because it was pre-sliced it wasn't thick-cut. And Lidia definitely had thick cut little squares of pancetta. So I bought bulk bacon instead. I think this is the first wrong step I made. Because there's so few ingredients, I think the dish really needed pancetta for depth of flavor. Anyway, on to the next obstacle.
I was determined to make fresh pasta. On her show, Lidia literally had her food processor about halfway filled with flour, turned it on, drizzled in some water and voila! Fresh pasta. Now, my food processor is the miniature size, so I used my standing mixer. No problem there. About three cups of flour and maybe 1/4 cup or so of water and the dough came together in a ball. Perfect.
I let it rest, rolled it out super-thin (I don't have a pasta rolling machine, so I used a rolling pin), cut it into strips, floured it very generously, and placed it on a floured towel. Then I set it aside for about an hour as my guests were arriving and my friends S, R, and I were setting stuff up. Mistake number two.
The sauce itself is super easy to make. I threw the bacon in a pan, planning to render the fat off it...but there really wasn't any. It was bulk bacon that I had cubed, and in the process, I had trimmed the fat off it. I thought I was doing us a favor. But in retrospect, I think that fat might've been necessary for flavor! Are we at mistake number three?
After browning the bacon a bit, I added the finely diced celery. Then tossed in about a half-can of tomato paste. It was super-thick so I thinned it out with the water boiling for the pasta. Then I added the beans. I let it simmer while I went to cook the pasta.
Well, the pasta was a mess. Letting it sit on the counter near my hard-working stove with 10 people in the room had warmed it up. The warming had resulted in it congealing back into lumps of dough. No longer did I have beautiful individual strands of pasta. It was as though I had never rolled and cut it at all! Luckily I had a box of dry fettuccine on hand.
While the fettuccine cooked, I went back to the sauce. I tasted it and was unmoved. It was...fine. Not great. The beans weren't bursting open to make the sauce creamy. The bacon wasn't giving a real bacony flavor (more just a pork flavor). And the tomato was exceptionally acidic. Poor news all around.
So, I added about 1/2 cup of parmesan cheese and about a tablespoon of honey, hoping the cheese would create some creaminess (had I had any cream or milk in the fridge, I would've added that) and that the honey would cut the acidity. I bet a tablespoon of butter would've been a good idea, too, but I couldn't think fast enough.
In the end, we all ate it and enjoyed it. I guess I just set my expectations too high. It was yummy...but...meh.
Anyway, when I do this again I will make sure to do the following:
1. use pancetta!
2. cook the beans longer than I did...I slightly undercooked them to help them keep their structural integrity. So great, I perfect little beans but no creaminess. Let the suckers cook!
3. be more careful with my fresh pasta. I frankly think the fresh pasta would've made the dish. I made some more the following day (just put olive oil on it) and the texture really makes a difference. I think the starches on the outside of the fresh pasta would've helped the sauce.
Luckily, I did something better (and more succint) with the leftovers. Stay tuned.
First, I couldn't get my hands on any pancetta. Or proscuitto. The butcher was clean out of it. I mean, they had some pre-sliced. But because it was pre-sliced it wasn't thick-cut. And Lidia definitely had thick cut little squares of pancetta. So I bought bulk bacon instead. I think this is the first wrong step I made. Because there's so few ingredients, I think the dish really needed pancetta for depth of flavor. Anyway, on to the next obstacle.
I was determined to make fresh pasta. On her show, Lidia literally had her food processor about halfway filled with flour, turned it on, drizzled in some water and voila! Fresh pasta. Now, my food processor is the miniature size, so I used my standing mixer. No problem there. About three cups of flour and maybe 1/4 cup or so of water and the dough came together in a ball. Perfect.
I let it rest, rolled it out super-thin (I don't have a pasta rolling machine, so I used a rolling pin), cut it into strips, floured it very generously, and placed it on a floured towel. Then I set it aside for about an hour as my guests were arriving and my friends S, R, and I were setting stuff up. Mistake number two.
The sauce itself is super easy to make. I threw the bacon in a pan, planning to render the fat off it...but there really wasn't any. It was bulk bacon that I had cubed, and in the process, I had trimmed the fat off it. I thought I was doing us a favor. But in retrospect, I think that fat might've been necessary for flavor! Are we at mistake number three?
After browning the bacon a bit, I added the finely diced celery. Then tossed in about a half-can of tomato paste. It was super-thick so I thinned it out with the water boiling for the pasta. Then I added the beans. I let it simmer while I went to cook the pasta.
Well, the pasta was a mess. Letting it sit on the counter near my hard-working stove with 10 people in the room had warmed it up. The warming had resulted in it congealing back into lumps of dough. No longer did I have beautiful individual strands of pasta. It was as though I had never rolled and cut it at all! Luckily I had a box of dry fettuccine on hand.
While the fettuccine cooked, I went back to the sauce. I tasted it and was unmoved. It was...fine. Not great. The beans weren't bursting open to make the sauce creamy. The bacon wasn't giving a real bacony flavor (more just a pork flavor). And the tomato was exceptionally acidic. Poor news all around.
So, I added about 1/2 cup of parmesan cheese and about a tablespoon of honey, hoping the cheese would create some creaminess (had I had any cream or milk in the fridge, I would've added that) and that the honey would cut the acidity. I bet a tablespoon of butter would've been a good idea, too, but I couldn't think fast enough.
In the end, we all ate it and enjoyed it. I guess I just set my expectations too high. It was yummy...but...meh.
Anyway, when I do this again I will make sure to do the following:
1. use pancetta!
2. cook the beans longer than I did...I slightly undercooked them to help them keep their structural integrity. So great, I perfect little beans but no creaminess. Let the suckers cook!
3. be more careful with my fresh pasta. I frankly think the fresh pasta would've made the dish. I made some more the following day (just put olive oil on it) and the texture really makes a difference. I think the starches on the outside of the fresh pasta would've helped the sauce.
Luckily, I did something better (and more succint) with the leftovers. Stay tuned.
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