Saturday, October 16, 2010

Feel Good Pasta

It’s been and will be really busy days for Lazy Cooks that’s why the limited posting. Travelling, crazy office hours, having our friend over, then having our family over. Coming birthday party for big girls, then coming birthday/Halloween party for little girls, coming dinner parties for the family…all exciting and fun stuff and we’ll keep posting as much as we can…but before all this here is our Feel Good Pasta for a quiet evening:

We were surprised that among the 39 posts we blogged since July, we haven’t included one of our favorite quick pastas. It is the zucchini-bacon pasta we’ve modified over the years. There is the carbonara version as well. However uncooked egg may be harmful for some of us right now! Anyway, it is light, healthy, tasty and quick to prepare, so on a weekday night you can crawl on the sofa with your bowl of pasta and a glass of red and watch your favorite series (House Season 6 or Mad Men Season 3 for us!).

Ok, we first slice the zucchinis very thinly along with the onion. We take out our cubed pancetta and start with frying the pancetta and onion in olive oil for 10 minutes until the onion becomes soft. We add the zucchinis, some fresh thyme leaves, a tablespoon of chopped parsley and one or two stalks of fresh rosemary leaves (if you don’t have fresh go for the dry one, but fresh is highly recommended), grated garlic and grated zest of 1 lemon. Season with salt and pepper and the sauce is ready when the zucchinis are cooked, which takes generally another 7-8 minutes.

onion, zucchinis, bacon & herbs in the pan
After the pasta is cooked al-dente, we don’t forget to reserve a half glass of its water before draining it. We combine the sauce and pasta in the same pot and add its reserved water (as it’s needed). Don't forget to add lots of grated parmesan. And the pasta is in the bowls, little girl is in the bed, The Mad Men is starting…a happy quiet Tuesday evening…

pasta in our usual pasta bowl!

Ingredients for 4:

- 500 gr zucchini (or courgette), cut as matchsticks
- 70 gr cubed pancetta, streaky bacon is just as good
- 1 small onion, thinly sliced
- Grated zest of 1 lemon
- 1 tablespoon of each fresh rosemary, parsley and thyme leaves (chopped)
- 2 cloves of garlic
- parmesan cheese

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