Pasta with creamy mushroom bacon sauce

 

It's snowing, again. And predicted to soon get down into the single digits, and negative single digits at that -- again. So cue the comfort food.

Creamy mushroom and bacon pasta

Adapted from Better Homes & Gardens, February 2018

Ingredients

4 slices of thick-cut bacon, cut into lardons

8 ounces sliced shiitake mushrooms

3 cloves garlic, minced

½ cup cream

½ cup chicken broth

2 tablespoons red wine vinegar

¼ cup chopped fresh chives

12 ounces orecchiette pasta, cooked and drained

Method

Cook bacon in a large skillet until crispy. Remove and drain on a paper towel.

Add mushrooms and garlic to drippings in pan, seasoning with salt and pepper. Cook until mushrooms and tender. Add cream and broth and cook until slightly thickened; it won’t take long. Return bacon to pan. Add vinegar, chives and cooked pasta and toss to coat. Adjust seasoning with salt and pepper if needed.

Rating: Tasty, tasty, and super fast to fix. One to keep in your back pocket and a way to use up some of those chives before they get buried in snow each fall. Makes 4 moderate servings, if anything can be said to be moderate about a recipe that includes cream and bacon.

Slow cooker soupe au pistou

I've made other versions of this before. But they didn't have the magic word slow cooker in the title, which always draws me in. Make sure you use a large slow cooker. Perhaps they have a different idea of what constitutes a medium vegetable, but this came alarmingly close to the brim of the crock even before the beans and pasta were added.

Soupe au pistou (Provencal vegetable soup with pesto)

Adapted from “The French Slow Cooker” by Michele Scicolone

Ingredients

4 medium carrots, peeled and chopped

3 medium Yukon gold potatoes, peeled and chopped

2 medium onions, chopped

1½ cups petite diced canned tomatoes

1 medium zucchini, sliced in half lengthwise, then in half lengthwise again, then sliced crosswise into ¼-inch slices

1 medium summer squash, sliced in half lengthwise, then in half lengthwise again, then sliced crosswise into ¼-inch slices

8 cups water

Salt and pepper

2 cups cooked cannellini beans, drained and rinsed

1 cup ditalini or other small pasta such as elbows

Pesto

Method

In a large slow cooker, combine carrots, potatoes, onions, tomatoes, zucchini and summer squash. Stir to combine. Add 8 cups water and season with salt and pepper. Cook on low heat for 8 hours.

Add beans and ditalini and cook another half hour or until pasta is done. Adjust seasonings as needed.

Serve in bowls topped with a spoonful of pesto as desired.

Rating: The resulting veggie broth in this is pretty thin and borderline bland. Maybe a bouquet garni would have helped? But it still works fine once you add a generous dollop of good pesto and swirl it in a bit to the hot liquid: instant flavor and warmth. Making this soup on the stove is probably preferable so the broth can concentrate a bit, but it if it's the only way to have warm soup at the end of the day, it's not bad, and fairly filling. I'd say it serves 10 quite easily.

Braised onion sauce with Madeira

 

And now for something completely different: onion sauce. Yes, I just made an onion sauce last week. But that was light and creamy, and this one is dark and dreamy.

And even more pantry friendly: Butter, onions, pasta and Madeira. Hard to get more basic than that. It does take a time commitment, but most of that time isn't hands-on.

Braised onion sauce

Adapted from “Beard on Pasta,” which shows an illustration of author James Beard tossing pasta with a somewhat maniacally intent look.

Ingredients

½ pound butter (Holy Cow, that’s a LOT of butter)

6 largish onions, peeled and sliced

¼ cup Madeira

Grated cheese, such as Parmesan or Gruyere

Pasta, 12-ounces to a pound. Pick something substantial like wide ribbons.

Method

Melt butter in a large skillet. Add onions and cook over medium heat until soft and translucent. Reduce heat to quite low and cook onions for an hour, uncovered. The goal here is not to brown the onions but to bronze them. How long that takes is going to depend on your burner and your pan. It took about 75 minutes for me. 

Meanwhile, cook pasta according to package directions. (The recipe did indeed give that range of pasta; I used a 12-ounce package and that was about right for the amount of sauce it made because the onions really cook down.)

At this point you have nice bronze onions simmering in what still seems like a LOT of butter and you’re wondering whether you should have cut back on the amount … But you add the Madeira and cook for another few minutes and somehow it turns into a sauce instead of a separated mess of onions and butter. If you used unsalted butter, you may need to adjust the seasoning with salt at this point. I used salted butter and didn't need any additional flavoring. Toss with pasta and serve garnished with grated cheese.

Rating: Very, very nice. Those onions are elevated to about their highest level in this dish. Caramelization and the glug of Madeira give it a nice richness. Still wondering about that much butter ... but heavens, it's tasty.

Tagliatelle with onion sauce

I'm pretty sure this isn't exactly what Mole had in mind when he taunted the toll-taking rabbits in "Wind in the Willows":"`Onion-sauce! Onion-sauce!' he remarked jeeringly, and was gone before they could think of a thoroughly satisfactory reply."

Clearly, Mole meant it as some sort of insult, but I wouldn't say anything derogatory about this onion sauce.

Tagliatelle with onion sauce

Adapted from “The Top One Hundred Pasta Sauces” by Diane Seed, and charmingly illustrated by Robert Budwig

Ingredients

1 pound tagliatelle or other wider noodle

8 ounces butter (one stick)

2 large onions, peeled and thinly sliced

Broth

7 ounces heavy cream

Sprinkle of nutmeg

Grated Parmesan cheese, optional

Chopped fresh rosemary leaves, optional

Method

Heat water to cook pasta. Meanwhile, melt butter in a large skillet. Add onions and cook over medium low heat until very tender. Do not allow to brown. Add enough broth to cover the onions. Cover the pan and cook onions for another 25 minutes. 

Puree onion mixture. Add cream, nutmeg and salt and pepper to taste. Keep warm.

Cook pasta until nearly done. Add to cream mixture and cook a few minutes until pasta is ready. Garnish with Parmesan and rosemary if desired.

Rating: Very nice. Very simple sauce that's pantry friendly. As written, it's probably not diet friendly, but honestly one could just skip the cream and still have a very white, creamy and tasty sauce that's a tad less caloric. I was a bit skeptical about the bit about not letting the onions brown, because I adore caramelized onions and the deep flavor they bring. But it works, and it results in a sort of savory cream. I thought the pinch of rosemary worked well here. Definitely something to add to the playbook.

Yellow split pea soup

 

January in Minnesota is still seasonal: Weeks of subzero temperatures when the house makes cracking sounds of discontent and the planes lumber overhead ominously. That kind of weather calls for thick socks and thick soups. Like wallpaper sludge thick, only tastier and a better color.

This recipe definitely qualifies as thick. It's sturdy enough you can stand up a spoon in it, the kind of savory sludge required for super cold days. This is one of my deep winter regulars, although this time I tried it with a smoked turkey leg instead of a smoked ham hock. That got the smoked turkey leg out of my freezer, where it's been languishing waiting for me to find back the other thick soup recipe I bought it for. 

It can't stand up against the furnace being out for 16+ hours while you huddle under an electric blanket waiting for the service repair guy; few things can. But it can help comfort you as the heat slowly seeps back into the radiators and, finally, into your bones. And hey, it's warmed up enough today to snow!

Yellow split pea, yam and carrot soup

Adapted from “Country Cooking” by Time-Life Books

Ingredients

1 small ham hock, about 1 pound, or a smoked turkey leg

4 cups water

1¼ cups yellow split peas

2 medium carrots, diced (about 1 cup)

1 small yam, peeled and cut into chunks

5 medium green onions, chopped

1 red pepper, diced

2 garlic cloves, minced

1 bay leaf

Method

In a large saucepan, bring ham hock and water to a boil. Boil for 4 minutes, skimming off the foam bits that rise to the top.

Add split peas, carrots, yam, green onions, red pepper, garlic and bay leaf. (Depending on how super thick you like your soups and how tall your ham hock is, you might want to add a ½ cup more water at this point; I usually do. Return to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer, covered until peas are tender, about 2 to 2½ hours.)

Remove ham hock or turkey leg. Remove any meat from the bone and cut into bite-size pieces. Mash part of the vegetables in the soup pot against the side of the pot to make a creamier soup. Remove bay leaf. Return meat pieces to the pot, heat through and serve.

This soup thickens up even more if it's refrigerated. If you make it in advance you may want to have some broth on hand to thin it a bit. Unless it's -13 outside.

Rating: This is one sturdy, tasty soup. And the red, green and yellow make it much more colorful than wallpaper paste.

Some other sturdy soups to get you through January:

Vegetarian chili

Split pea soup with ham, the name of which sounds similar to the recipe above, but it has a very different flavor profile.