/ Our magazine / Pasta with zucchini and bacon: a veggie dish kids love!
/ Our magazine / Pasta with zucchini and bacon: a veggie dish kids love!
Pasta with zucchini and bacon is a simple and quick first course. It is delicious, prepared in no time and will win everyone over. The main ingredients are few, but together they create a lot of goodness!
Pasta with zucchini and bacon is a perfect first dish for a family lunch or a picnic. Usually, the pasta type to use is a short pasta (penne, fusilli, corkscrew, etc.), perhaps ridged or one that holds the sauce well.
The most interesting aspect of pasta with zucchini and bacon is that it is also liked by those who have a hard time with vegetables because the fat released from the bacon, so to speak, sweetens the taste of the zucchini as if it were a delicate blanket.
The zucchini are among the sweetest and most pleasant vegetables in nature; they are diuretic and contain very few calories (18 per 100g). Loyal allies of health, they are rich in potassium and vitamins A, C, and E, making them a perfect food for careful diets.
It is hard for children not to like them: first, because they have a nice bright green color, second, because they can be prepared in many versions (diced, julienned, sautéed, baked), and third, because they have a high satiety power. This emphasizes that children will almost certainly not spurn them; they will digest them well, and they are something familiar to them.
Regarding pasta with zucchini and bacon, the sauce generally used is that of zucchini cut into strips, but zucchini cubes are also fine, almost never the rounds.
The bacon can be cut into cubes or strips; the choice is free. Of course, a nice sprinkle of Parmigiano Reggiano or Pecorino Romano will give it a bolder flavor.
No one doubts that bacon, a cured meat made from pigs and specifically prepared from parts of the fresh pork belly, is a lean product. However, it is also true that even in Roman times, pork was a fundamental energy resource. A ration of bacon was given twice a week to the hungry soldiers of the time, along with other fats like lard and suet. Even in the subsequent Lombard period, bacon was seen as an energizing dish for many laborers, particularly masons.
The bacon is considered one of the typical products of Italian cuisine; it is a specialty always included in the list of traditional agri-food products. For example, there is rolled bacon, herb bacon, stewed bacon, and garlic bacon, which differ in shape, size, and production methods.
Pasta with zucchini and bacon can be seen as an excellent "passkey": it allows you to "enter" into less demanding palates and satisfy those that require a certain type of cuisine.
After all, to prepare a good recipe for pasta with zucchini and bacon, you don't need a long list of ingredients nor any special skills in the kitchen. You can even consider it a great alternative to the more 'traditional' pasta with zucchini and tuna.
In fact, this pasta helps us avoid wasting leftovers from other preparations, using them to improvise a dish that truly yields incredible results: it pleases everyone, amuses but above all relaxes.
The creamy pasta with zucchini and bacon is a particularly easy and very tasty dish to make. It can be prepared in just a few minutes, saving us in a corner when we have unexpected guests for dinner and a total lack of ideas for cooking.
In cases like this, it's better not to panic because anxiety might lead us to make mistakes. Let's take it one step at a time. First, let's check if we have the two main ingredients: zucchini and bacon. Ok, we have them. Oops, we are missing the cream. No panic, an English speaker would say! There is always milk, which can replace it perfectly. Oil and salt? Those are always in the house. Great, let's proceed with the preparation of an extraordinary, quick, and surprising dish of creamy pasta with zucchini and bacon. It takes just 20 minutes to cook, with low difficulty.
Ingredients for 6 people:
• 500 g penne
• 3 zucchinis
• 100 g sweet bacon cubes)
• 1 cooking cream (or milk)
• q.b. sea salt
• q.b. extra virgin olive oil
• q.b. black pepper
Bring water to a boil to cook the penne (we choose the rigatoni from Felicetti) and in the meantime, start cooking the sauce. In a pan, sauté the bacon in oil for a few minutes, then add the diced zucchini. Add half a glass of water, season with salt, and cook for about 10 minutes. When the zucchini is cooked, add the cooking cream, mix well, and combine the cooked pasta. Stir, and if needed, loosen everything with a little cooking water. Sprinkle with pepper and enjoy the creamy pasta with zucchini and bacon.
The pasta with smoked zucchini and bacon is a quick and impactful dish that delights the palates of somewhat demanding people. In fact, smoking is an ancient technique of preservation and flavoring of food that involves not only meat but also fish, vegetables, and some cheeses. The smoky effect is certainly the sovereign element that makes one of the two main ingredients special: the bacon, of course, along with beautiful green zucchini, and why not, perhaps a little mozzarella cut into cubes, as desired.
Ingredients for 4 people
Start the recipe by washing and then drying the three zucchinis carefully. In a pan, heat two tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil with the garlic clove and the diced smoked bacon. Once the bacon is nicely browned, remove the garlic from the heat, drain the fat and keep just the warm smoked bacon. In another pan, lightly brown the previously julienned zucchini for a few minutes. Once done, cook the pasta in plenty of salted water. When al dente, toss it in the pan with the smoked bacon and zucchini. As a great seasoning, add a chopped fresh basil and the mozzarella cut into pieces to the pasta. Serve the fusilli with smoked zucchini and bacon with a nice grind of black pepper.
The pasta with zucchini cream and bacon is a sure winner, especially if the recipe uses cured bacon. Cured bacon is a variety of bacon that gets its name from the fact that the piece of meat it is derived from, namely the lean part of the pig's belly, is expertly salted and flavored (for example, with chili for a bolder taste), it is aged in its original shape, unlike traditional bacon which has a round and plump shape. Generally, cured bacon has a square, rectangular shape, with blocks or slices striped with pinkish-red and white. It melts in your mouth thanks to the noble fat streak from the pig's lean belly, for a still mild taste even when flavored.
If you want to prepare a pasta with zucchini cream and bacon that is truly impressive, you must first choose a good piece of cured bacon and secondly a type of pasta that can hold sauces and creams well. The trofie, for example, is an excellent pasta shape for this: you will need a clove of garlic or half an onion, oil, salt, and pepper, and the game is done.
Let's see the recipe in detail.
Ingredients for 4 people
Bring a pot of water to a boil to cook the pasta. Meanwhile, wash the zucchinis, cutting off the ends, divide them in half lengthwise, then in half again, and finally slice them. Take the bacon and cut it into strips. Heat the extra virgin olive oil in a pan, add the whole peeled garlic clove, lightly sauté it, and then add the bacon and zucchinis. Season with salt and pepper and cook over medium-high heat for 10 minutes, stirring occasionally.
After the cooking time is up, take a ladle of zucchini and cured bacon from the pan and set it aside for decoration. Remove the garlic. At this point, the water for the pasta will have reached a boil, so season it and cook the trofie for the time indicated on the package.
Meanwhile, transfer the remaining zucchini and bacon mixture from the pan to a tall and narrow container, add a couple of ladles of pasta cooking water, and blend with an immersion blender until you obtain a smooth and homogeneous cream. Pour the resulting cream back into the pan off the heat. When the trofie are al dente, drain them directly into the pan and mix well to combine all the sauce. Finally, add the zucchini and bacon set aside for decoration and plate up. Pasta with zucchini cream and bacon (cured) is ready to be served!
As possible additional variations, we recommend adding confit tomatoes to add color and flavor to the preparation or dried tomatoes, Taggiasche olives, and a few sprigs of fresh cow or goat ricotta.
The puff pastry with zucchini and bacon is a rustic pie that is very simple and quick to prepare, perfect as an appetizer or for a picnic on a spring or summer day. It's something delightful that you eat with your hands after cutting it into slices. The crowd around the cook will compete to taste a piece as soon as possible and will not hesitate to ask for seconds!
Wash and slice one zucchini into rounds, cook it in a pan along with three tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil and the chopped onion. Add half a glass of hot water and salt, and let it cook for ten minutes over moderate heat. After ten minutes, add the bacon and cook for a few more minutes. Meanwhile, mix the eggs in a bowl with the Parmigiano, salt, pepper, chopped parsley, and ricotta. Add the zucchini with the bacon to the ricotta and egg mixture and mix gently. Roll out the puff pastry and place it in a 22 cm diameter tart tin, leaving the parchment paper underneath. Prick the bottom with a fork, pour in the entire mixture, and fold the edges over. Preheat the oven to 200 degrees, bake the pie, and cook for 25/30 minutes at the same temperature. As soon as the puff pastry is golden brown, take it out and let it cool before slicing.
Bon appetit!
Anna Cesaro
S&M
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