For Christmas, my partner’s sister gave me a copy of the Bi-Rite Market’s Eat Good Food: A Grocer’s Guide to Shopping, Cooking & Creating Community Through Food
After one day of flipping through the book, I knew I had to go check it out, so on our final day off before heading back to work, Sean and I jumped on BART and headed into the Mission for lunch and general food perusal. I am a complete sucker for lovely little markets. Grocery shopping is actually one of my favorite things to do. So this place was kind of like heaven to me, even though it was awfully cramped and crowded. The shelves are stuffed full of lovely goodies like locally produced olive oil, fresh baked bread, crisp cellophane packages of delicate cookies and candies, round tubs of housemade salads, tins of Spanish sardines and bottles of unusual sauces and ketchups. The produce is gorgeous (I couldn’t stay away from the blood oranges), the meats are all thick and deep red and beautiful…the whole place had me swooning.
We did buy some sandwiches (and they were terrific), and I picked up some foodie gifts for a friend. But I was most excited about the ingredients I bought to make this pasta: deep purple cipollini onions and a carton of fancy mushrooms.
I have never cooked with cipollini onions before, because I’ve heard they are a mighty pain in the arse to peel. And they were.
Don’t let that deter you, though. Sometimes good things are worth a little work. It was easier to deal with these after I quartered them, and lopped off the ends. A sharp knife is a very helpful thing here. We really need to have our knives sharpened soon.
This is one of those simple pasta dishes that benefits immensely from using very good ingredients. But really, you can’t go wrong with bacon and mushrooms. One things I love about this, too, is that it’s finished off with butter. You can’t go wrong with bacon, mushrooms, and butter.
Mushroom and Cipollini Onion Pasta
Adapted from Tyler Florence’s Tyler’s Ultimate: Brilliant Simple Food to Make Any Time
- 1 tablespoon olive oil
- 2 slices thick cut bacon
- 3-4 medium to large cipollini onions, peeled and quartered
- 8 ounces mushrooms, chopped (if you can, get a nice blend of wild varieties)
- 2 teaspoons herbes de provence
- a good pinch of aleppo pepper or crushed red pepper flakes
- 2 cups dried pasta
- 1 tablespoon butter
- salt to taste
- parsley and Parmesan to taste
Fill a large pasta pot with water, and set it to boil. While the water is heating, slice your bacon into smaller bits. Heat the olive oil in a large skillet over medium heat. When it’s hot, add the bacon pieces and the quartered onions. Let them cook for about five minutes, or until the onions are golden and beginning to fall apart a bit. Add the mushrooms and stir well. Add the herbs de provence and pepper flakes, and a small pinch of salt. Let the mushroom and onion mixture cook, stirring occasionally, for about 10 minutes.
Meanwhile, when the water comes to a boil, add a good amount of salt, and the dried pasta. Let it cook until nearly al dente, then reserve a cup of the cooking water, and drain the pasta. Add the cooking water to the skillet with the onions and mushrooms. Bring the liquid to a boil, and stir, scraping up the browned bits from the bottom of the skillet. Stir and let the liquid boil until it begins to thicken a bit. Stir in the butter until it’s melted, then stir in the reserved pasta.
Stir everything together well, then taste and add additional salt if needed. Serve, garnished with parsley and Parmesan, if you like that kind of thing.
