Bacon and Butternut Pasta

I renamed this dish, “Bacon and Butternut pasta”, leading with the bacon because, in my revamping of the dish, that was the flavor that led.

I do have a fear of butternut squash, not eating it, but cutting it.  They are hard and can be difficult to cut.  I usually talk Michael into cleaning them for me, and that worked this time.  You can of course often find fresh cubed butternut squash in the produce department or even go with frozen.  Either would work fine in this recipe.

To meld the dish with the wine, I amped up the fat and depth of flavor, frying the bacon first then adding the butter to the bacon grease to cook the onions and the rest of the dish.  I happened to have a little mushroom stock left from rehydrating some mushrooms the other day, so I supplemented my chicken stock (which was not low sodium) with that.  This will add mushroom notes and Nebbiolo is known to pair well with wild mushrooms.

I have fresh sage and rosemary growing in the backyard, so those were the herbs I used.  The wine has big tannins (a polyphenol that occurs in red wines and black teas, among other things.  They are astringent.  If you want to see what tannins taste and feel like, put a wet tea bag on your tongue). While the tannins will be good with the fats, I wanted to add another tannic ingredient to the dish to match, so I toasted some walnuts to top the dish.

This is a pretty simple dish, you need a pot for the pasta, a pan for the sauce, and a food processor, blender, or…oh man, I could have made this easier by just using my immersion blender (facepalm!)