Food Porn 2 - Pasta Borgia

Flour

Butter

Milk

Hot mustard

Aged white cheddar

Bacon

Green onion

Salt/pepper

Pasta of choice 

Fry up the bacon and crumble into bits. Set aside (and no snacking!)

In a small saucepan over medium heat, make a roux with the flour/butter; add milk and stir until thick. Add salt and pepper, mustard, cheddar, green onion and whatever bacon bits are left from illegal snacking.

Cook pasta as per directions on package.

Pour sauce over cooked pasta and toss to coat.

Serve with baby tomatoes, more bacon bits and more green onion as garnish. 

* * * 

While this is in no way an original recipe—a zillion variations are doubtless unique to a zillion home cooks—Ter and I christened it “Pasta Borgia” because it’s killer yummy.

The greatest challenge of going gluten free has been what to do about pasta. We ate a lot of it in our day—pasta with red sauce; pasta with cheese sauce; pasta with pesto cream sauce; pasta with sausage, peppers and mushrooms; pasta al forno (dubbed “al porno” because, well, nothing in our house is ever called by its proper name) … the list seemed endless when we realized just how many of our favourite dishes contained noodles in one form or another. Linguine was a staple, as were penne and fusilli. Ter made a veggie lasagne that was so good I never missed the meat. Spaghetti, rotini, farfalle, fettucine, vermicelli, you name it, we had it in our pantry.

I know, I know. There are sundry forms of gluten-free noodles. We tried a few. Yuk, blech and erg. Noodle consumption for the better part of the past year has been at Asian restaurants because the best pasta requires durum semolina. Yet Ter’s passion for pasta has dwindled not one whit, so she’s persevered in the search for a GF brand that will at least try to fool us in ways the competition has not.

She found one at our local healthy food store. It’s not cheap, but it’s edible. And it comes in baby shell form! That was our favourite shape for Pasta Borgia – and now that we’re able to eat it again, we’re likely to take on a similar shape ourselves.

Oh, who cares? Mangia!