Weekly Dish

Noodles are clearly a staple around my house. Experimenting with pasta is one of the earliest ways I learned to make dinner both fast and good, and my love of the noodle is one of the reasons I could never join the low-carb craze. I like my noodles saucy or plain, thick or thin, hot or cold–in truth, it would be difficult for me to think of a noodle dish I don’t like. So when Amy announced that noodles were to be the theme of this month’s Is My Blog Burning event, I wondered how I would choose just one pasta dish to contribute.

This fettucine is certainly not the fanciest of pastas, but it is one of my favorites to fix. If you toss it properly, each bite is packed with a bit of tart tomato, creamy avocado, and crispy bacon, accented now and again with the fresh clean taste of cilantro, the crunch of a green onion, or the sweet mildness of a pine nut. With fresh ingredients and minimal prep work, this pasta dish is, in my estimation, the perfect quick, light supper. We have eaten it often at the end of a long school day or on a Sunday evening when I didn’t quite feel like cooking. The recipe is also highly adaptable: any nut would do in the place of the pine nuts (or none at all), and more vegetables would probably also work nicely in the mix (red bell pepper comes to mind).

Avocado and Sun-dried Tomato Fettucine

based on a recipe from Intercourses by Martha Hopkins and Randall Lockridge

1/2 cup sun-dried tomatoes, diced (the dehydrated ones, not packed in oil)
1 pound fettucine
5 slices bacon
1/4 cup pine nuts
2 tablespoons chopped green onions
2 avocados
1/4 cup cilantro, minced
Juice of 1 lime
3 tablespoons red wine vinegar
1 tablespoon olive oil

Soak the sun-dried tomatoes in 2 cups boiling water for about 5 minutes, or until they are soft. Drain; setting aside the tomatoes and reserving the soaking water. Pour the water into a saucepan, return to a boil, and add the fettucine (you may need to add water to make sure the noodles are covered). Cook the pasta until it’s firm to the bite, but not mushy. Meanwhile, cook the bacon in a small skillet. Remove the bacon slices when they’re cooked through and set aside to cool. Drain off the grease from the skillet, and toast the pine nuts until golden brown. Dice the avocados and sprinkle lightly with Kosher salt. Set one aside for topping. In a large bowl, combine half of the tomatoes, the pine nuts, green onions, one of the avocados, and the cilantro. When the pasta is done, toss it immediately with the avocado mixture. Drizzle the whole dish with the vinegar, olive oil, and lime juice. Toss again. Serve topped with the crumbled bacon and the reserved avocado and tomatoes. Serves 4 for dinner.

Tagged with: IMBB # 22 + Noodle

Posted: Saturday, January 28th, 2006 at 9:13 am Filed under: Main Dish, Food Blogging Events, Vegetables, Pasta. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.