pappardelle con bacon e peperoni
pappardelle with red pepper sauce and smoked bacon
Here's a fantastically seasonal pasta sauce for Bonfire Night - a smokey red pepper and pecorino sauce with smoked bacon. I've used fresh pappardelle from the supermarket chiller cabinet but you could also use any of the dried pappardelle available on the Fratelli Camisa website.
I based my sauce around a kind of Turkish 'ajvar' red pepper sauce, which you make with roasted red peppers, aubergines, garlic and smoked paprika. You can find jarred ajar in UK supermarkets but it's really worth going to the effort of making it yourself from scratch.
WHAT YOU'LL NEED TO DO
(scroll down for the full method)
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prepare the ingredients
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roast and skin the peppers
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cook the aubergines
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blend the sauce
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cook the bacon
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boil the pasta
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combine and serve
pappardelle with red pepper sauce and smoked bacon
FOR FOUR PEOPLE
INGREDIENTS
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2 smoke bacon rashers per person
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4-6 red peppers
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1 medium aubergine
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smoked paprika
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1 clove garlic
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pecorino
PASTA
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400g pappardelle
MANTECATURA
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none, simply combine
After Turkish Ajvar, my other inspiration for this sauce was classic Italian Amatriciana, which, as you all know, is simply a tomato sauce with guanciale and pecorino stirred through it. For this Bonfire Night variation, we're going to stir pecorino through an Ajvar inspired sauce, then throw in shards of smoked bacon and make it taste even more Iike a bonfire with a little extra smoked paprika. I like the hot and spicy kind, but you could also just as well use the 'sweet', non-spicy variety.
Begin by roasting the red peppers directly over a gas burner. If you haven't got a gas cooker and are therefore incomplete, either break out the BBQ or cut your peppers into thin strips and fry them gently until soft and tender.
Cooking them on a gas cooker, keep turning them until the whole of the skin is charred and blackened. Your hob might get a little messy but the kitchen's going to smell FANTASTIC. Removing the skin is easy - just plunge the cooked pepper into a bowl of cold water, cut a slit with a knife so that the hot air tipped inside the pepper bubbles away. Then just tear each pepper in half with your hands and rub gently between your fingers to get most of the skin off. Pat the peppers dry and transfer them to a chopping board where you can use the edge of a knife blade to scrape any stubborn bits of skin off, before cutting the peppers into strips.
(NB if you pat the strips of pepper dry with kitchen towel you can store peppers in a jar under olive oil for a week or so and add them to salads, pizza etc).
Next, cut the aubergine into small cubes and fry in a little olive oil with a crushed clove of garlic, until cooked.
A little like making a pesto, blend the peppers and aubergine together to taste, adding a squirt of double-concentrate tomato paste (or a couple of sun-dried tomatoes in oil), salt and smoked paprika.
Transfer the sauce to a non-stick saucepan and let it reduce a little until you get the balance of flavours you like, and also simmer away any excess water.
While the sauce is reducing, fry the bacon and then tear or cut into shards or small pieces.
Take the sauce off the heat and stir a few tablespoons of grated pecorino through the sauce,.
Boil the pasta and then transfer to a low, wide pasta pan which you 've previously added a few ladles of pepper sauce to, toss to combine. Sprinkle on the bacon, toss again and plate.
Add more paprika, cayenne pepper or fresh chillies to taste.