The start of the XMas break brought along a noticeable decrease in the number of vehicles due to the school holiday shutdown, but the commute didn’t shorten as others somehow still managed to make the drive a misery by finding new ways to get into accidents.

The inane I can deal with because after routinely running the I-76/I-95 carbecue corridor to/from PHL for the better part of 18 months, it becomes an exercise in whether any of the new examples of poor driving are at all surprising. However, the trek to and from the southern apple fields wound up resembling an extended full-throttle Road Warrior-esque experience as everyone switched from transporting children to school to rushing to the malls to complete last-minute shopping. You know you’re in trouble when all routes out from the fields are packed with throngs of adrenalin-laden Montana drivers powering down the asphalt trying to simultaneously beat one another to the access points into shopping galleria parking lots.

Navigating through extended stretches of desperate shoppers does not make for a calm commute and after drives like this, I arrive generally with no time and in no particular mood to make something good like an eight-treasure duck or rafute/buta no kakuni (豚のかくに). Since eating out or getting take-aways get pretty expensive pretty fast, it still comes down to coming up with something reasonable in a limited amount of time. I could have this can of Klik that I’ll have to get around to opening since that’s a “once a year” ritual, but that requires bread and condiments which of course requires a certain amount of planning.

Or I could rummage through the refrigerator and pantry and come up with something else.

This is a fairly free-form recipe and I don’t claim originality since I’m sure I’ve eaten this somewhere.

Ingredients

• 227 g mushrooms
• 1 grey shallot
• 1 clove garlic
• 4 rashers of bacon cut into lardons
• arugula
• unsalted butter
• cream of white balsamic (also known as white balsamic glaze)
• pasta (whatever you like)
• parmigiano-reggiano cheese

Preparation

Finely slice or shred the mushrooms and mince the shallot and garlic. Cook the bacon lardons until the bacon is crispy. Remove the bacon and let drain on a paper towel and retain two tablespoons of bacon fat in the pan. Start cooking the pasta, timing it so that it is ready (al dente) once the sauce is ready.

Soften the shallot and garlic in the pan with the bacon fat, then add mushrooms. Cook mushrooms, and add salt and pepper to taste. Add arugula, toss the contents of the pan so arugula starts to wilt, and add a couple of squirts of cream of white balsamic. Add a small quantity of butter.

Add the cooked pasta to the arugula and mushrooms. Toss the pasta and sauce together. Return the cooked bacon back to the pan and toss contents again.

Service

Plate the pasta (bowl or plate), grate the parmigiano over top, and eat (preferably using utensils).

Photos

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Notes

I made the demo with button mushrooms but I suspect that using pleurottes (oyster) rather than button mushrooms would be a nicer alternative. Then again, if you were Ronny, the mushrooms would just get ixnay’ed.

I guess if you really wanted to, you could also omit the bacon, butter and cheese and use a vegetable oil to transform this dish into a true vegan alternative, but to paraphrase Todd Flanders, that would make Baby J*sus cry.

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