Today is the birthday of a friend of JBoD. Her blog is Nekoneko’s Movie Litterbox. If you love horror movies from around the world, her site is the place to go. It has great reviews, good humor and the occasional recipe.
Here’s a cool birthday vid for a fellow cat lover. 🙂
Oh, and since you said that your name means “happiness” or “beautiful snow” I thought I would add a vid from Japan that seems to show both at the same time. It’s also food related as it shows white radishes being freeze dried.
Here’s Lastech’s recipe for pappardelle, bacon and cabbage he cooked for my birthday:
there are several variations of this, but the basics remain the same: pasta, cabbage, garlic and bacon.
For the pasta, buckwheat pappardelle’s the best. The texture and flavor of the buckwheat pappardelle really blends with the other ingredients here.
For two people, I used about a third of a pound of bacon and cooked that first. Pancetta’s recommended in many recipes but it feels to fat (bit grisly) to me, and bacon’s a perfect substitute. Save the bacon grease for biscuits and gravy later…
While cooking the bacon, I boiled the half head of cabbage cut in medium strips (to match the wide cut of the pasta) along with two (maybe three) heads of garlic. You cannot have too much garlic… Ever.
While the cabbage and garlic finish softening at a simmer, take the bacon for a quick trip to the freezer. This’ll harden it and make it easier to crumble into the mix.
Pappardelle cooks quickly, between 5 to maybe 8 minutes in boiling water. But since it will continue cooking in the cabbage/bacon/garlic mix, you can shorten it’s time in the water by maybe a couple minutes or so. This way it’ll continue to soften as it absorbs the flavors of the mix and also release its own, without turning mushy.
For best results, use a bit of the bacon grease and melting butter as you stir everything together.
Adding sliced mushrooms adds a lot to the earthy flavors of the dish. Not necessary, but extremely enjoyable. Since we didn’t have mushrooms, I added an onion (caramelized). In addition, Brussels sprouts work great in place of cabbage.
Oooohhh!! Thank you both for the wonderful birthday wishes!! **Big Hugs!!** 😉
Love the videos… especially that crazy sat attacking the singing card… so darn hilarious!! Ting-ting does a very similar thing with our TV sometimes, getting all worked up when she’s surprised by the sudden appearance of some animal on a show. Poor lil’ thing works herself into a tizzy and can practically have a fit trying to attack things on the screen.
I sort of know this recipe!! My grandma Carstairs, my Dad’s mother, used to do something very similar that she called “Cabbage Noodles”. It started with a big dollop of bacon grease….. lovingly saved from a couple of weeks of breakfast bacon… into which she sliced an onion and a polish sausage. Once the onion was ready, in went that big spoon of garlic, a generous amount of black pepper, a couple ounces of chicken stock, and some cooked wide egg noodles. Toss it together and it’s as tasty as all heck…. as long as you thought of all that bacon grease as “pasta sauce”, Hehehehe!!
Your grandmother’s version sounds good. We have a wonderful Polish deli over on the Avenues. They make their own sausage and bacon. It’s heavenly. I can assure you, will try her noodles. 🙂
Hehehe!! Just don’t forget the cabbage…. like I did when I first replied. 😉
I just got so excited that my wee lil’ brain got bubbling faster than my fingers could type. I’m going to try your version tonight, but I don’t have any pappardelle so I’m thinking I’ll snap some lasagna noodles down to size and try them. Mmmmmm!! 😉
That sounds delicious. I am definitely making that.
It’s very good and rather simple to make. I think you’ll like it. I love it.