Quick and Simple

I've been holding on to a few cooking stories for a little while now, but have lacked the desire to write. I really don't know why, it just comes and goes I guess. As I've found myself in a relationship, one of my chief complaints to cooking has been conveniently removed. Simply put, I hate cooking for one. I'd cook something, and then end up eating it for three or four days. Eating it the first time was fine, except that regardless of the effort I'd be done eating in 5 minutes. Now, the leftovers are shared, and I eat a little slower. Conversation is really the best part of any meal.

Now, beyond dishes, which everybody hates, the only thing holding me back from cooking is time and ingredients. Coming in at the end of a long day, and spending time in a hot kitchen for an extended period of time is not always a blissful and fulfilling experience. So, I'm trying to cook/create dishes that are quick, economical and tasty. Such was the dish I prepared last week, which has a bit of its own story.

In March, The Singer travelled to Italy with some of her family. Much art was viewed, paths walked and pasta eaten. The dish that she really enjoyed was a simple pasta with garlic, olive oil and bacon. Given that I'm me, and I take a great interest in solving problems, I decided to see if I could recreate this dish (and use up a half pound of bacon in the process).

Bacon Spaghettini

• 1/2 lb bacon, chopped and cooked
• 1/2 lb dry pasta, cooked to al dente
• 3 cloves garlic
• olive oil
• parmesan cheese

After frying up the bacon, I removed it from the pan and patted the grease off it with some paper towel. I drained the pan of all but a little bit of bacon grease, which meant the good crunchy bits were still there. Knowing that was the good stuff, I was determined to capture and use it... the only hard part was how. This is a process known as deglazing, but I didn't have anything to deglaze the pan with. I didn't want to use water. There was no white wine, and red would have been too heavy. Chicken stock was right out. What to do? What to do? I pondered it for a few minutes till I looked on top of her fridge. There, in all it's glory was The Answer to My Prayers.

¡¡¡¡¡VODKA!!!!!

Yep, I added bit of vodka to the pan and got those wonderful crunchy bits. That problem solved, I tossed in the garlic and lemon zest to heat and then added the pasta. I mixed it up with the olive oil and the parmesan so everything was warm and served. The end result... very close to what she had.

Now, I know there's one burning question I have to answer... namely, where the hell did the lemon zest come from? That wasn't on the list of ingredients!

Part of making a quick and simple dinner is trying to make it healthy as well. So, we needed a bit of salad to go with the pasta and help offset all the starch. That was the Singer's department, as she makes a lovely lemon-curry salad dressing which is simply divine over mixed vegetables. In this case, baby carrots, sugar snap peas, red pepper and red onion. The result being a super yummy salad, and a left over lemon peel which I used for my own nefarious purposes.

All total, about 30 minutes prep and we had a wonderful dinner for two and lunch for two. Rob Morrow and James Denton declined the invitation to dine with us.