Year: 2012

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.