Episode 22: Sorta-Pasta all’Amatriciana with Quickest Kale

This week, I make perhaps my most standard standby pasta, a mix of onions, tomatoes and bacon–great year-round, and totally doable with just pantry items. On the side, I boil a bit of kale and dress it up with chili flakes and vinegar.

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Bacon

Pasta: spaghetti, bucatini, linguine

Tomatoes: best-quality canned or fresh (grape tomatoes for best flavor)

Onions

Kale

Red-wine vinegar

Olive oil

Chili pepper flakes

Pecorino romano or good-quality parmesan

Sorta-Pasta all’Amatriciana

This is a great dish to cook any time of year, as well as an excellent emergency pantry-only kind of dish–as long as you start considering bacon a pantry ingredient (it does keep in your fridge for a couple of weeks, or in your freezer forever). But as I say in the podcast, this is hardly an “authentic” recipe for many reasons, so maybe it’s more honest just to call it pasta with onions, tomatoes and bacon. Some recipes also call for chili pepper and/or garlic, but I don’t find this is necessary–and then you have some room to make your side dish spicy and/or garlicky.

I use canned Muir Glen or San Marzano tomatoes, or good ripe grape tomatoes, and thick-cut bacon yields chunks with a little bit more texture (Niman Ranch, for instance–I don’t like it just to eat straight, but it has a good flavor for cooking). As for pasta, bucatini–like thick spaghetti, but hollow–is traditional, but hard to find, and also hard to eat because you can’t slurp it up. Standard spaghetti works fine, as does linguine.

Serves 2

Salt

4 thick slices bacon

2 medium onions

Glug olive oil

5 or 6 canned tomatoes, or the better part of a pint of grape tomatoes

1/2 lb. bucatini, spaghetti or linguine

1/2-inch wedge or so pecorino romano or good-quality parmesan cheese

Put on a pot of water to boil, and salt it generously.

Slice raw bacon into 1/2- or 1/4-inch pieces, then cook in a heavy skillet on low heat, stirring occasionally. Some pieces will be crispy, and some will be chewier–this is fine. Remove from the skillet and drain on a paper towel. Pour off all but about 1 tbsp of the bacon grease.

Slice onions in 1/4-inch slices. Cook on medium heat in the pan with the bacon grease and an extra glug or so of olive oil. (If you’re in a hurry, as I am in the podcast, you can get the onions going in a separate pan, with just olive oil, then move them over to the bacon-greased pan when the bacon is out.) Sprinkle on some salt–this helps the onions soften up. Moderate the heat so the onions get soft, but don’t get crispy brown spots. (See Episode #2 for tips–no need to caramelize the onions so extremely for this, though.)

When the onions are thoroughly soft, add the tomatoes and crush them up with the back of your spoon. Let this mixture simmer 10-15 minutes–the tomato juices should thicken up but not cook away entirely. During this time, you can get your pasta boiling, according to the package directions (although check it early,