orecchiette all'etrusca con bacon


etruscan orecchiette with smoked bacon
Often, just adding an additional ingredient or two to a recipe doesn’t change much. Here all I’ve done is to swap the pici from the 'standard' PIci all'Etrusca recipe and add Ammatriciana-style smoked bacon slivers... but the recipe feels so different to eat! I dumped the mint in the previous recipe too; maybe that’s also helped to make this feel less fresh and loads more indulgent.
Taste wise, there are so many echoes of Pesto Genovese but the egg and bacon lift it to a much richer dish. Sausage meat or grilled black pudding, or even something fishy are some other alternatives to bacon that you could consider.
WHAT YOU'LL NEED TO DO
(scroll down for the full method)
prepare the ingredients
boil the eggs
cool the eggs
separate yolks and whites
fry the bacon
pick the herbs
blend ingredients
boil pasta
combine sauce and pasta, plate

etruscan orecchiette with smoked bacon
INGREDIENTS
FOR FOUR PEOPLE
6 rashers smoked bacon
PESTO
a large handful basil
a large handful parsley
3-4 leaves fresh mint
2-3 small cloves garlic
1 egg per person
6-8 tblspns EVO
100g (3.5oz) pecorino
PASTA
500g (18oz) dry /fresh orecchiette
MANTECATURA (?)
none, simply combine

METHOD
Begin by hard-boiling 1 egg per person. Remove the shells and allow them to cool completely. When they’re cold, hold remove the yolks and set them aside. Break up the whites, using a fork. Crush the garlic and set aside. Dry fry the bacon and when it's cooked cut it into thin slivers. Set aside. In a similar way to making a pesto, use a blender to pulse blend about half all the ingredients. Keep tasting as you blend and don’t spare the oil - you need to arrive at a pretty liquid, oily mix as the egg will tend to dry things up. Add one of the yolks just before you stop blending. Taste again and adjust salt / pepper, then set the pesto aside.

Boil the pasta and combine it with the pesto and half the bacon, without using any pasta water. If your combined pasta is too dry, add a drizzle of EVO. This is quite an oily, not a starchy sauce. Crumble egg yolk on each portion, together with more black or pink pepper and pecorino.
NUTRITION per serving
KCAL: we're working on it!
Fat (g): TBC
Sat Fat (g): TBC
Carb (g): TBC
Sug (g): TBC
Fibre(g): TBC
Prot (g): TBC
Salt (g): TBC
