Hi everyone. Welcome back to Le Gourmet TV. I had a really busy day and I’m sure like most of you out there, I’m really strapped fro time. I come home. I’m in a rush. I don’t really have a lot of time to cook supper. And I want something hearty and flavorful. So tonight I thought I’d had pasta but instead of grabbing for a can of pre-made pasta sauce, I’m going to show you that in the time it takes to boil the water and cook the noodles, you can make a really flavorful pan sauce at home.
So we’ll get our pot started with the water. The water’s already in here and it’s salted, and we’ll start out making the sauce. First thing, I’m going to use bacon. You don’t have to use bacon. You can use pancetta. You could use ham. You could use sausage. You could use chicken. I’m just looking for a protein and I think tonight, I’d really want that smoky rich flavor that this bacon can bring. So I’ll start the pan, kind of medium high heat, and in goes the bacon. While the bacon is sautéing, I’ll move on to the next ingredient and it’s just one yellow onion. The bacon’s starting to sizzle, so I’ll just move it around in the pan. You do want to get a little bit of browning on this. You want to build that flavor in the bottom of the pan. Since this is not going to have a long cooking time to develop those flavors, you got to get them where you can and part of that is from this bacon.
I’ve got some rotini here, nothing special on the rotini. Just pop that into the water. Give it a little bit of a stir so they don’t all stick together. Ok, so our bacon is part way cooked and starting to brown so at this point we’re going to add in the onions and the garlic. And I’m going to turn the heat down. I don’t want to brown the onions and I don’t want to burn the garlic. I just want them to soften and start to release their juice. And at this point, a little bit of pepper. Cremini mushrooms, I’ve just got a handful and I’m not really going to spend too much time chopping them. This is a really quick dish so just kind of a rough chop. I’m also using my homemade bacons and it’s very lean, so not a whole lot of fat is going to be released into it. If you’re using store butt bacon, you may have to drain off some of the fat before you put the onions in. So this can stand just a little bit more heat now and we’re going to add in the mushrooms.
So our onion, garlic, bacon and mushroom mixture is cooking down nicely and the next step is to add some tomatoes. So I’ve got a can of plum tomatoes that I drained most of the liquid from. Again, because of the short cooking process, we don’t really have enough time to evaporate a lot of liquid, and I like this to be kind of a thick, thick sauce. And to this, a tablespoon of oregano and about a teaspoon of red paper flakes. Sauce is looking great. Pasta is cooked so I’m just going to take it over to the sink and drain it. No need to rinse it, and if there’s some residual liquid left on the pasta, that’s fine. It can just go into the sauce. And turn the heat down a bit so I’m kind of medium low now. And just toss the pasta and the sauce together and continue cooking it. And the pasta is going to soak up all of the juice, all of the tomato juice, and all of the flavors as it continues to cook just a little bit more.
Now to this, I’m going to add half to three quarters of a cup of freshly grated Parmesan cheese. And we’ll just toss that in. It’s going to melt into the entire dish. And just to top it off, I’m just going to roughly chop some flat leaf parsley, and just kind of a handful. Sprinkle that in and then toss that into the pasta. And that’s it. It’s really fast. It took me the same amount of time to prepare and chop all of the ingredients and make the sauce, as it needed to boil the water and make the pasta. Hope you enjoy this and I’ll see you again soon.