VINTAGE PASTA WITH FIVE TASTES – PENNE WITH BACON & BLUE CHEESE

This pasta is so 80s as much as “penne alla vodka”. But as black, even the eighties will never pass away of style. I must confess that there are four recipes that – despite many sessions of coaching followed by as many despairs post bankruptcy – I have never been able to cook like the original: the scrambled egg of my grandma Ester, the meat sauce of my grandma Franca, the chocolate brownies of mom and the pasta with five tastes of Luca grandmother. The latter is the protagonist of the today recipe, and I’m willing to bet that for each of you that we’ll prepare it will have a different version.
It’s a bit ‘as the “wireless phone game” in a culinary edition, although the doses and ingredients are an objective fact, the result is unequal for each hand that cooks. There’s nothing to do: the secret ingredient is the hand of one who bakes. I decided to give you this recipe, as my boyfriend’s family has given to me, hoping to have too, one day, a recipe so precious to become the subject of a gift.

Ingredients (serves 4)

• 320 gr. of short pasta (preferably “penne”)
• 150 gr. of gorgonzola cheese
• 150 gr. of cooking cream
• 2 tablespoons of grated Parmesan
• 100 gr. of smoked bacon
• 50 gr. ham steak
• Parsley, red pepper powder q.s.
• Extra virgin olive oil, salt q.s.

Matching soundtrack: Sex machine, James Brown

PROCESS

First adjust the water to boil, done that you can fully dedicate yourself to the sauce: you’ll see that it will be a snap. Start with place the ham slices on a cutting board and chop them finely with a knife – will be a kind of “mince”; now transferred the chopped ham in a dish to which you will add the grated parmesan and the chopped parsley.

When finished this step I recommend you to salt the water and put the pasta on. Therefore, place on heat a frying pan (which is big enough to allow you to easily saute the pasta once cooked), a little extra virgin oil and as soon as it sizzles, cook the bacon gently over low heat: it should not brown.

Put aside the bacon and, in the same pan, melt over very low heat the gorgonzola cheese mixing it with a wooden spoon. Once melted, remove from the heat and add the cooking cream. Mix the sauce and then add the bacon and the previously prepared ham. You’ll see that you’ll create a yummy sauce in which, when cooked, you can soute the pasta with a ladle of cooking water, giving it even more creaminess to your dish.

Photography: Sara Cartelli.
© The Eat Culture.