The Annals of Bacon Research

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Issue 4: Bacon Pasta with Bacon Blanc This is somewhat of a double feature as far as ABR issues go. I started off intendint to just make some bacon pasta, but eventually realized I'd need some sort of sauce for the pasta. After some thinking I figured the best sauce would be something with a bacon base; why not a bacon beurre blanc?! The Pasta: The idea for this originally occurred to me several years ago. Some friends and I were driving up to the mountains for the weekend after a friend's wedding and on the way the ideas did flow. Of all the ideas the we came up with this is one of the better ones, not to mention more practical. I started by making a batch of basic pasta dough using all purpose flour. Pasta dough and pasta machine While it was resting I fried up the bacon (lightly crispy, I wanted to retain some flexibility the reasons for which will be clear later). Obligatory bacon cooking photo After the bacon was cooked I let it cool down until it was comfortable to handle, then rolled it up axially and did a chiffonade cut. Bacon chiffonade Next I rolled out the pasta dough, and prepped it for adding the bacon. I decided to do two different shapes of pasta for this test: first I'd try a bacon ravioli, not very interesting or inventive but bound to be tasty, second I wanted to try a bacon pappardelle - the wide noodles make for a good medium to sandwich flavoring items such as herbs or .. bacon in. Rolled out sheets of pasta dough For the ravioli filling I just used straight bacon chiffonade - no herbs or frou frou mushrooms to get in the way of the delicious smokey pork taste. To assemble them, I cut several disks out of the pasta dough using a round cutter, and mounded the bacon on half the rounds and then used some water to glue another round on top of each one. When doing this you have to take care to seal the edges well so the filling won't escape when you boil the pasta. For the pappardelle, I used two methods for sandwiching the bacon inside. The first thing I tried was just sandwiching some bacon chiffonade between two sheets of pasta dough and running it through the pasta machine again to secure everything. This worked fairly well, but lacked a certain amount of fantasticality. I decided a whole piece of bacon would make a much better sandwich layer. Of the two methods, the bacon chiffonade was certainly easier to produce as it went through the pasta machine easier, and it took less effort to get pieces of dough to adequately cover it, but it was less recognizable as bacon. This is where having slightly flexible bacon comes in handy, with crisp bacon you're more likely to end up with shards of bacon sticking through the dough, rather than having it neatly sandwiched inside. Three types of bacon pasta: the circles at the top are ravioli, the strips running horizontally on the left are made with chiffonade, and the vertical strips on the right used whole strips of bacon. The Sauce: For the sauce I decided to do a variation of a beurre blanc, but instead of blending cold butter into the base I opted for some cold bacon fat. I started by reducing some bacon vinegar with a grind of pepper in it and a few extra shreds of bacon for an added flavor kick. With the vinegar reduced I pulled a can of bacon fat out of my fridge (gee, I wonder where all these cans of bacon fat came from) and started swirling it in until the sauce reached the proper consistency and acid/fat balance. With the sauce ready, I boiled the pasta (since it's fresh pasta it cooks quickly, generally 30 seconds to a minute in the water), drained it, sauced it and dinner was served. Bacon pasta with a bacon blanc (hard to see, but it is there) with some bacon chiffonade as a garnish. Delicious!

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