This recipe probably seems a bit on the fancy side, but it is super easy and fast to make.  This is from the April issue of Food and Wine magazine, recipe is by my man Mario Batali.  You know what Mario Batali loves?  Cured salty fatty meat.  You know what I love?  Cured salty fatty meat recipes from charcuterie.  Speaking of which, I am curing duck prosciutto right now and it’s hanging to dry in the basement for the next 5 to 7 days.  Anyhoo, for this recipe, I got the pancetta from Target, and a bag of frozen artichoke hearts from Trader Joe’s – perfect for a quick dinner on a busy night.

Spaghetti with Artichokes and Pancetta

6 servings, adapted from Food & Wine Magazine

Ingredients:

• 1 12 oz bag of artichokes
• 1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
• 1 medium onion, finely chopped
• 4 garlic cloves, minced
• 3 oz diced pancetta
• 1/2 cup dry white wine
• kosher salt and pepper to taste
• 1 pound spaghetti
• 1/2 cup freshly grated parmigiano-reggiano cheese

Directions:

1. In a saucepan, heat the oil.  Add the onion, garlic, and pancetta and cook over moderate heat, stirring, until softened, about 10 minutes.  Add the artichokes to the saucepan,  cook over moderately low heat, stirring, for 5 minutes.  Add the white wine, cover and simmer over low heat for another 5 minutes, season with salt and pepper.
2. In a large pot of boiling salted water, cook the spaghetti until al dente.  Drain the pasta, reserving 1/4 cup of the pasta cooking water.  Add the pasta and the reserved cooking water to the artichokes and toss over moderate heat for 1 minute.  Remove from heat, stir in the 1/4 cup of cheese.  Serve the pasta, with sprinklings of cheese.

Special shout out to Jamie who got me the awesome bowls pictured.  They are supposed to be for ramen, the holes are for your chopsticks you see, but they work for any kind of pasta imo!  Plus they fit great in your hand!

Hello!  I suck at blogging, but hey here’s a new post!  So… I started using this app foursquare on my iPhone lately and it’s really cool you see, it posts your location, when you go places, you check in, and you broadcast where you are, so stalkers can stalk you, but you get to be mayor of places!  Like it’s really cool!  You get stuff for being mayor, like RECOGNITION, and POWER, and ROBOTS.  Ok the last 2 aren’t true.  I became mayor of a local pub because Sean and I love the place, because we went there like TWICE A WEEK… sometimes three times but please don’t tell anybody.  I held on to my fame for about a week, and today I was ousted.  Very sad.  I have turned to blogging to heal my emo wounds.  So you see, this futile attempt at becoming the mayor of a restaurant caused days and days of not cooking and thus not having material for my blog and thus suckitude.  But hey, I made this delicious peppery pasta carbonara dish (which I make a lot, because it’s delicious, and super easy, and full of bacon).

Voila!  I cook!

This is for 1 serving, recipe from epicurious.  I used a thin spaghetti, and had no tarragon or parsley so I substituted green peas.

Ingredients:

• 2 bacon slices, cut into 1-inch pieces
• 1/4 pound spaghetti
• 1/2 tablespoon unsalted butter
• 1/3 cup grated Parmigiano-Reggiano plus additional for serving
• 1 to 2 tablespoons chopped tarragon or parsley
• 1 large egg

Directions:

1. Cook bacon in a 10-inch nonstick skillet over medium heat until crisp. Transfer bacon with a slotted spoon to paper towels to drain.
2. Meanwhile, cook spaghetti in a 4-quart saucepan of salted boiling water until al dente. Reserve 1/3 cup cooking water, then transfer spaghetti with tongs to a small bowl, shaking off excess water, and keep pan of water simmering.
3. Pour off all but 2 teaspoons bacon fat from skillet, then whisk butter into fat in skillet over medium heat. Add spaghetti, reserved cooking water, cheese, and a rounded 1/4 teaspoon pepper and cook, stirring, until sauce is thickened and almost completely absorbed, 2 to 3 minutes. Add bacon and 1 tablespoon tarragon and toss. Season with salt and pepper.
4. Break egg into a cup and gently slide into water. Poach at a bare simmer to desired doneness (we prefer a firm white with a runny yolk, 2 to 3 minutes).
5. Serve pasta topped with egg (transfer using a slotted spoon). Sprinkle with remaining tarragon if desired.

And here is some egg porn, because you can’t have a poached egg without egg porn.

Yay my food and wine magazine is here!  To celebrate, I made a recipe from it.  I went to SUPER FOODS and Dragon Star in frogtown last weekend and got about a dozen littleneck clams.  Except I think they were labelled wrong, and they should have been called bigneck clams, because they were huge.  Way bigger than what I think littleneck clams should be.  Aren’t they huge? (That’s what she said).  Ok maybe you can’t tell the scale from this picture, but look at the size of these clams compared to the thickness of the spaghetti noodles!

This recipe was super easy and I would definitely make it again.  The steamed clams were delicious, I paired it with some white wine (duh) and Sean was scared at first because he’s particular about some seafoods, but he loved this dish.  You might think this dish need to be salted, 1 pound of spaghetti and all, but the natural saltiness from the clams are perfect and this dish does not need any extra salt.

Ingredients:

• 1 pound spaghetti
• salt
• 1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
• 4 garlic cloves, minced
• 1/2 teaspoon crushed red pepper
• 2 dozen littleneck clams, scrubbed (or 1 dozen giantneck clams!)
• 1/4 cup water
• 1/4 cup finely chopped parsley
• fresh ground black pepper

Directions:

1. In a large pot of boiling salt water, cook the spaghetti until just al dente, then drain well.
2. In a large, deep skillet, heat the olive oil.  Add the garlic and crushed red pepper and cook over moderately high heat, stirring occasionally until the garlic is lightly browned (~1.5 min).  Add the clams and water, cover and simmer until the clams open, about 5-8 minutes.  It took my gargantuan-neck clams about 8 minutes.  Discard any clams that don’t open.
3. I modified the recipe here by taking out the clams, before I added the spaghetti and chopped parsley to the  skillet and season with pepper.  I didn’t want to toss the clams with the spaghetti, it’s a lot easier to just take them out.  Toss over moderately high heat until the spaghetti absorbs some of the juices, about 1 minute.
4. Transfer to bowl and serve!

SEE HOW GIANT MY CLAMS ARE?  *snicker*