Bacon and Onion Orecchiette.
So you can use either a small Savoy cabbage,
which is a tender cabbage,
and a little lighter, and less dense
than a traditional white cabbage.
Or you can use a pint or so,
you need two to three cups for a pound of Orecchiette,
of chou chou, the French term for little cabbages.
Chou chou, Brussels Sprouts.
And I've given these a nice rinse,
and just a trim on the end,
and I'm just gonna attack it
and shred them down to the little nub.
And as I get close to the core,
I just sort of slice around it,
and discard the very, very end of that core.
This is, as I said, smoked pancetta.
It comes in large slabs, it's not rolled.
And all I do is take the slabs, pile them up, make sticks,
turn the sticks into little slices.
Or dices, doesn't matter.
Basically chop it, right?
And we're gonna let this render in the pan.
See how I have just a gentle (mimics sizzling)?
I'm trying to get all the flavor out of this.
I put a little olive oil, two turns,
and I'm gonna let this cook over moderate heat
until it begins to get crisp.
Don't take it too far.
You're not making bacon bits for a salad.
You want to render it and you want it crisp at the edges,
but not too hard.
Okay, so I pulled out the smoked pancetta, or bacon.
Here it is.
I left some of the drippings in the pan. There they are.
And the olive oil in the pan, and I added onion,
and as you can see, it's now getting soft and lovely.
Now we're going to add our cabbage
and/or our Brussels Sprout.
And start wilting that down, of course it's (indistinct)
So that will cook down quite considerably.
Give this is a little even out here.
And I'm gonna ahead and add in a few cloves of garlic
and our 20 leaves of sage,
white pepper,
or fine ground black
if you don't care for the taste of white pepper,
or you don't have it in the house.
Nutmeg.
Bay.
And now we'll let this cook down.
Always, always when we cook pasta,
season the water itself, so you season the pasta itself.
This is one pound of Orecchiette,
any short-cut pasta will do.
And now to let the chou chou,
or the little Brussels Sprouts cook down quicker,
we add first our acidity with the white wine.
And we let that fully absorb and cook out.
And now we're going to add our stock.
In my case, chicken bone stock, around 3/4 of a cup,
just to keep this all moist and getting along.
And you can add back in your drained
and likely crisped, or on our end, what's left of it,
bacon or smoked pancetta.
We're gonna take the bay leaf out of the onions and cabbage,
or Brussels Sprouts.
We're going to reserve a little starchy cooking liquid
from our cooking water for our Orecchiette,
or any short-cut pasta.
I turned the stove off so we won't set our Moppine on fire,
drain the pasta,
add all of the pasta to all of the sauce.
Now we're gonna do the really fun part.
We're gonna add a little
of that salty, starchy cooking liquid,
which is why we always, always under-cook our pasta a bit
to account for carryover cooking,
which is what we're doing now.
And we're gonna add in pecorino
if you like it salty and tangy,
and parmigiano if you prefer it nutty.
Here we go.
Pasta night in less than 30 minutes
with ingredients you probably already have on hand.
(chimes tinkling)