Mushroom, bacon and veggies with Linguine

Hi!

I'm so sorry I haven't posted in so long! I think it's nearly a month now, which is unforgivable! In my defence, I've been planning an engagement party, and works been picking up, so there's been minimal time. To add to that, I've had an uninspired cooking month, where nothing quite yelled 'wow' at me, and everything was just ok, not brilliant.

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All that changed last night! I was going to make a chicken casserole, with a 'new' casserole my gran recently gave me, but I realised I had gone and forgotten to get enough onion, so I decided just to make myself some dinner, and I'll make the casserole tonight.

I made a rather terrible dish a while ago, in which I tried to substitute smooth cottage cheese for cream or creme fraiche. The result was appalling!!!! The cottage cheese curdled, and made the whole sauce grainy! I'm not very experienced cooking with cream, I tend to avoid it, as I perceive it to be higher in fat than, say, a tomato based sauce. But I'm SO over tomato based sauces, so I got some reduced fat cream, and decided to bite the bullet and cook with cream.

This mushroom, bacon and veggie linguine was delicious!! I LOVE the pasta that I used here, in the baked rosemary and pork sausage pasta, it has a lovely texture and works so well with everything I put with it! Makes me feel like a wonder chef, but I think that quality ingredients will do that to you!

I used white mushrooms for this, since they were in stock, and quite cheap, but I think it would be even better with brown, or portobellini, or a mix of portobellini and wild mushrooms. The water released by the mushrooms really flavour this dish in an AMAZING way..

So without further ado, I give you

Mushroom, bacon and veggies with Linguine

Ingredients:

1/2 pack streaky bacon (or whatever kind you like)
1/2 pack mushrooms (white, brown, whatever, see previous note)
1/2 yellow or red pepper
1/2 a red onion (milder, sweeter taste than the yellow onion)
handful frozen peas
handful frozen corn
pinch of paprika
250ml reduced fat cream
sprinkling of powdered parmesan

Method:

1. Chop the onion, and fry in a little heated oil
2. Chop mushrooms, peppers and bacon, and toss them in to fry with the onion
3. Cook pasta according to packet instructions, with enough time so that it is ready when the sauce is ready
4. Fry all on a medium hear until the mushrooms have given up their water, the onion is soft, and the bacon cooked
5. Add the cream, lower the heat and simmer
6. The cream will thicken slightly, and I added some powdered parmesan which I had on hand to the sauce, since I can't resist putting cheese in!
7. Just before the pasta is cooked, toss in the peas and corn, either straight from frozen, or slightly zapped in some water in the microwave. It adds some more colour, and ups the deliciousness. I always have frozen peas and corn in the freezer, for occasions such as this!
8. When the pasta is cooked, serve some pasta into a bowl and serve the sauce over.
9. Eat and enjoy!!

I really enjoyed this last night, it was quick and easy to be worth preparing just for myself. There was enough left over for 2 lunches. I felt a bit bad about the cream, but I thought my reduced fat cream mitigated the decision slightly AND I don't eat cream so often, so once in a while can't kill, right? Besides, it was delicious!