The caption under the picture I clicked on Tastespotting said “This recipe will make you happy.” And it did, but also it didn’t. It made me happy, because mushrooms sauteed in bacon grease can’t fail to make someone happy if they like mushrooms, but Matt’s dislike of mushrooms has apparently extended past the objects themselves and extended to any dish that includes them - a position previously only held with regard to green peppers, which flavour the entire dish, but mushrooms, until now, did not. Now they do, so he hated it, which means it wasn’t a success. So that didn’t make me happy. It takes a lot to make bacon unpalatable to him.

I, on the other hand, thought it was amazing. The overarching flavour, in my opinion, was bacon, not mushroom, and the sauce was delicate and creamy. I could eat this all day long. If I ever decide to make it again, I’ll take the mushrooms out once they’re done cooking and only add them back into my portion. I don’t know if that will keep their flavour out, but it’s that or nothing.

But this also means that I have to reevaluate some recipes. See, when I email them to myself, I categorize them by what kind of meal they are, unless they contain something Matt won’t eat, in which case they go into the “only me” file (well, unless they also contain something he loves, in which case I can’t make it at all because is that fair? And now this dish falls into that category). After talking with him about it, I hadn’t been putting recipes featuring mushrooms into the “only me” file, because he said they didn’t ruin the whole dish and that he could just pick them out (and give them to me). But now I know that that’s not the case, so I have to go back through and pull out all the mushroom-including recipes.

I’m tired of this part now. Let’s just do the recipe and then I can go to bed. It’s from the Foodista Blog. She used chanterelle mushrooms, I used regular supermarket button mushrooms (pre-sliced for your convenience, even). She had parsley to mix in, I did not. She made enough for 4 people, I made enough for 2. Now you know.

Bacon-Mushroom Pasta

Ingredients
pasta
2 strips bacon
1/2 cup mushrooms, sliced (note: this is me further halving the amount of mushrooms so there’s only enough for one person. If you are making it for two people who both eat them, double this)
1/4 cup white wine
1 tbsp cream
parmesan

Method
Cook the pasta according to package directions.
While that’s going on, cook the bacon. Ideally, the pasta will be done at just about the time that the sauce is done; it’s a pretty quick sauce and the longest part thereof is cooking the bacon.
When the bacon is done, take it out and drain it on a paper towel, but leave the grease in the pan.
Saute the mushrooms in the bacon grease until they’re soft.
Break up the bacon into bite-sized pieces, then add it back into the pan, along with the wine, and simmer until, as the original recipe says, the alcohol has cooked off. I had no idea when this was, so I gave it a couple of minutes and then decided it was time to move on to the next step. Worked for me!
Stir in the cream until the sauce, as they say, comes together. So not a bunch of globules of cream floating in wine. You know. I also added a pinch or two of parmesan at this point, so you want to stir until that’s incorporated as well.
The pasta should be ready now, so drain it, if you haven’t already, and then toss it with the sauce.
The original recipe had you seasoning it to taste with salt, but bacon and parmesan are both salty, so you might not need any.