Sunday Gravy with yeah right: Mushroom Bacon Pasta!

Good morning all!

Hope you’re enjoying your long holiday weekend.

This is the first year in several where the 4th of July falls on a day where it’s part of a three day weekend, rather than a standalone single day off in the middle of the week type thing.

Much better this way. Having one day off in the middle of the week doesn’t give anyone ample opportunity to celebrate SHIT! Then you have to go back to work the next day after overeating AND over drinking? That’s some bullshit, right there.

Much better this time.

The World Cup games have been incredible so far with Chaos looking like the real team to beat.

We’ve got games later today, including Brazil v Norway and Mexico v England!

I mean, C’mon!

Please feel free to comment away on the games once they get going.

I do have a pretty damn good original recipe lined up for you today as well and I appreciate you stopping by to take a quick look at it. Promise it’s quick and tasty too.

A few weeks back when browsing around for recipes I ran across a mention of Mushroom bacon pasta. Sounded interesting.

The bacon will be playing the part of guanciale, which is used in more traditional recipes. That’s because I had bacon in my freezer and I did NOT have guanciale in my freezer.

I read a few of these recipes but none really felt “right” enough to catch my fancy.

“Creamy bacon mushroom pasta” became “Creamy bacon mushroom pasta bake.” All a little too drab and middle America for my tastes. So I gathered ratios and such from several different places then decided to make this motherfucker using my own skill set and experience.

I did read a recipe for “Penne Boscaiola” or a creamy “Woodsman” pasta that got pretty close to what I was looking for.

I still want to use what I had available however and that meant using up bacon, mushrooms, sun dried tomatoes and grated parmesan.

Fuck that shit, man! I can do this all by myself.

I don’t need no stinking recipe!

No accreditation needed today. I’ll own this shit.

Yeah right’s Mushroom Bacon Pasta with Sun Dried Tomatoes!

Here we go.

You are going to require:

A half box or so of dried pasta  – I used farfalle for its chew but really any pasta could work here.

Several strips of bacon cut into small pieces. About 5-7 ounces worth.

8 ounces white mushrooms – sliced

1 large shallot – minced

3-4 cloves garlic – minced

1 tablespoon of minced sun dried tomatoes

1/3 cup white wine – I like my Pinot Grigio, I do

1/2 teaspoon dried basil

1/2 teaspoon dried oregano

8 to 10 ounces heavy cream

Half cup of grated parmesan

2-3 sprigs of fresh thyme.

Salt & pepper to taste

For serving: freshly grated parmesan cheese.

Let’s start with the pasta.

Farfalle is the “bow-tie” pasta and it has a kick-ass chew and texture. Plus it’s a little easier to wrangle onto your eating fork. It’s also a little cleaner to eat since you won’t have strands of lengthy pasta whipping around your dining room slinging sauce all over the goddamn place.

Just a better pasta for this application.

We will next require the dicing of one large shallot.

There’s been some really nice shallots in the stores lately. Never studied them long enough to find out if they have a “season.”

Turns out they are usually in season in the early spring so that makes more sense now.

Give it a proper mince.

Yeah, you noticed the minced garlic up there too. Just get all of your prep done before getting down to making this dish. It comes together really fast.

Since this dish can take on a LOT of flavor, go ahead and chop up the sun dried tomato.

I did say mushrooms, yeah? Rinse and drain and get ready for action.

Chop up the bacon into lardons and get it in the skillet.

The sauce is effectively a one-skillet sauce. When we’re done cooking the sauce we’ll just dump it into the pasta pot once the pasta has been cooked and drained.

Stir everything together and you’ve got a “Bingo!”

Cook the bacon until it starts to crisp, then add in the shallot.

Shit yeah. Saute that shallot right in the bacon grease.

If you noticed I didn’t once say “Drain the bacon grease.”

That’s not a phrase I use if I can help it.

Cook and saute the shallot for 2-3 minutes then add in the mushrooms.

You KNOW this shit smells incredible right now! Saute until golden brown, say 6-8 minutes.

Next in goes the minced garlic and the thyme sprigs.

The initial recipes I read used chicken stock to deglaze the pan but fuck that. We need some big flavor up in here. Gimme the good shit.

Let’s get a look at our mushrooms.

Perfect. In goes the vino. Between 1/3 and 1/2 cup. Not too much because we don’t want our sauce too thin. Besides we need to save some to drink.

Add in the wine.

Cook for a few minutes until the wine gets absorbed into the mushrooms and everything smells perfectly delicious.

Add the heavy cream and cheese in there.

Cook until the cheese blends in and the sauce thickens. Just a few minutes should do.

Be sure to remove the thyme twigs before serving.

Cooking time will vary but it should be between 6-10 minutes.

When the texture of the sauce is to your liking add it to the cooked, drained and rinsed pasta.

Stir fully to get all of the pasta nice and heavily coated in the sauce.

Serve along with a side salad.

Be sure to add some freshly cracked black pepper right on top of the pasta. Gives it a fantastic little finishing kick.

Zoom in on that pasta would you?

It’s fucking perfect.

Creamy yet lite. It has plenty of delicious bacon but it still feels friendly on the digestive system. The cheese is rich but it never feels heavy. The little acidity from the wine and the subtle notes from the sun dried tomatoes chime in.

It could have used more tomatoes to be honest.

Excellent, excellent stuff,

I feel pretty goddamn proud of this one. All these years of fucking around with Sunday Gravy and now I just know what works with what and in what amounts.

Hell of a job for just “wingin’ it.”

Our “Fun” holidays today include: National Bikini Day, National Hawaii Day…

Do I really need to go any further? Isn’t that more than enough?

Alright. It’s also National Workaholics Day, National Apple Turnover Day and National Graham Cracker Day.

See! I should have stopped with the first two. But I do enjoy a nice apple turnover.

Thanks for reading and for spending part of your Sunday with me. It’s always highly appreciated.

Yes, you can go watch the games now!

Stop by again next week won’t you?

See you then!