Pasta With Cream and Pancetta

Submitted by melle_escaton

"This is a lovely Alsacian-inspired pasta dish that I learned from a French flat-mate, and that has become an absolute favourite. It is truly delicious!!"

 

• Ready In: 30mins
• Ingredients: 5
• Serves: 2

ingredients

• 200 g penne (or any other type of pasta you like)
• 200 g pancetta (or a few slices of bacon, diced)
• 1 large onion, finely chopped
• 2 -3 garlic cloves, finely chopped
• single cream (or double, if you like it heartier)

directions

1. Boil the pasta in lots of salty water, the more water you use, the better the pasta will be, even for a small quantity.
2. Drain the pasta and let it stand until your sauce is ready.
3. To save time, start preparing your sauce while the pasta is boiling.
4. For the sauce: in a frying pan, fry the onions and garlic with the pancetta until the onions are golden brown and the pancetta is crispy. Do not use more than a few drops of oil, or even none at all, because the pancetta will give you plenty of that.
5. Toss the pasta with the fried onions, garlic and pancetta.
6. Pour cream over it all, as much as you like (I use about 100 ml).
7. Season with salt and pepper, according to taste.
8. Voila, your delicious meal is ready!

Reviews

[Mrs. Doeinck]

This is a great recipe because it is so simple and basic, which enables you to add things to suit your taste. I deglazed with sherry before adding the pasta and cream...I also added some frozen sweet peas to mine, and some pepper...needed to add quite a bit of salt to make it taste right. I will make this again for sure. Thanks!

 

[AuntWoofieWoof]

This was okay for me. I used bacon I made it exactly as written. The recipe didn't say whether or not to frain the grease, so I drained the grease into a smaller skillet and fried chicken in it. There was enough to do that. This tasted very good. A nice combination of flavors. It was easy to make too. However, I noticed that the bacon got soft after adding the cream. I think next time I make it, I will fry the bacon first by itself until it gets crispy, remove it from the skillet and finish making the recipe and then once the cream is in the skillet, crumble the bacon and add it to mixture and stir it in. Hopefully the bacon won't get as soft. Thanks for sharing your recipe. Made for the Spring "08 PAC Orphanage.

 

[LightEra]

My kids and I loved it. We used serrano ham instead of pancetta since that's what I had sitting around, and added a maybe a tsp. of olive oil to get the onion and garlic to cook properly since the serrano doesn't have as much fat. The ham wasn't as crispy, but had a good flavor. I also had to sub about two tbsp.s of creme fraiche mixed with about 1/2 c. of milk for the cream, but it worked fine. My kids asked me to make sure I saved this recipe!