Rotini with Tomato-Pancetta Sauce

Monday October 29

At Findlay Market last Saturday, they were rewarding anyone who took a survey with free biscotti from Angelina's. We are never averse to a free taste, and the biscotti were pretty good, though Holt's are of course far superior.

While at Angelina's, we decided to try a slab of pancetta; Krause's pancetta is spiced, which is too much like capacola for us. A quick browse through Epicurious came up with several recipes for a pancetta and tomato sauce for pasta. The basic ethos seemed to be:

chop up a couple of ounces of pancetta;
cook it in a pan until crisp, adding some chopped garlic OR some chopped onion;
sprinkle a pinch of black pepper if using onion, crushed red pepper if using garlic;
add a cup or two of chopped tomatoes (ideally cherry);
let simmer until tomatoes soften, and one recipe says add a quarter cup of cream;
shower with a big handful of basil leaves, and mix the pasta in with the sauce.

We tried this using the last little crop of garden tomatoes, garlic, but no pepper, as we wanted the smoky taste of the bacon. All I can say is, be more generous with the pancetta, and hope that your tomatoes are juicy; ours were not, so we added the cream at the end. It was good enough, but still needs to be tinkered with. Maybe needs romano cheese?