Pasta With Potato Cream and Bacon

As an Italian living abroad, I naturally tend to draw my attention to the best you can get from a specific land.

Italy has the widest variety of veggies and fruit in Europe; most of them are the best you can get. This is due to the unique biodiversity we have. It is a tiny country but we do experience a great diversity of temperatures and very specific conditions that allow this kind of excellence to be available.

Now that I'm based in the Netherlands, I miss the large assortment of veggies that I have back home, but rather than complaining, I'm working on the best ingredients this country can get.

Netherlanders are famous mostly for their cheeses, stroopwafels, anything within the cauliflower family, and potatoes.

Unfortunately, I could not fully experience the cabbage greatness due to IBS, so I focused on using the potatoes in different recipes.

Potatoes here are just amazing. They are tasty, cheap, and versatile. The funny thing is that I worked on a potato farm during my first year in Australia. I did not choose that as a job, but I needed it to obtain a new Visa to stay in the country for an extra year, and after that experience, I promised myself I would never touch a potato ever again.

Well, never say never. Life changed, and now I live in the land of potatoes! For this reason, I got into the Dutch mood of eating potatoes almost daily. In this case, I made the "pasta della domenica" meaning "the Sunday pasta," with a creamy sauce based on delicious Dutch potatoes.

I used some pancetta that my mum sent us from home, but you can use bacon or, even better, guanciale instead. The secret of this recipe consists in the juicy fat that melts from the meat, so you want it to be not too lean.

The recipe where I got the inspiration has milk, which I substituted with pasta water and some Parmigiano, and I used gluten-free pasta instead of the regular one.

I hope you will like it as much as we did!

Buon appetito!

Makes: 2 servings
Serving Size: a plate each
Prep Time: 10 minutes
Cook Time: around a total of 30 minutes

Ingredients for pasta with potato cream and bacon:

• 6oz of pasta, I used tortiglioni
• 2 tablespoons of coarse salt
• 10 oz of potatoes
• 3 oz of pancetta or bacon
• 2 oz of parmesan cheese
• salt and pepper to taste

Directions for pasta with potato cream and bacon:

1. Put 2 pots of water to boil.
2. In both, put 1 tbsp of coarse salt.
3. Peel, wash and dice the potatoes.
4. Put them into one of the boiling water until soft (about 20 minutes, depending on the size of the cubes you make).
5. Dice the pancetta and add it to a hot pan until it becomes crunchy and most of the fat is melted.
6. Once crunchy, remove the pancetta and leave it on the side. Leave the juice in the pan.
7. When the potatoes are soft, drain them.
8. Put the pasta to cook in the other pot of water, and add a timer for a minute less than the cooking time written on the box of the pasta.
9. While the pasta is cooking, blend the potatoes with some pasta water, half of the pancetta's fat juice, and the Parmigiano until creamy.
10. Taste the cream and add salt and pepper. You want to taste it first cause there was already salt in the water, and Parmigiano gives great taste.
11. Once the pasta is al dente, add it to the pan with the fat juice, mix it for a minute or so, then add the creamy potatoes.
12. Let it mix for another minute, then add the crunchy pancetta.