Left Coast Contessa

Bacon, done healthy

April 2, 2011 at 6:02 am 1 comment

Yes. You read the title of this post correctly. It’s a bacon pasta recipe from cooking light! It may not be “healthy” but it’s “calorie light” (at around 350 a serving). Yes. You read that correctly, and you can thank me later.

I found this gem in a back issue of Cooking Light that I found while cleaning my kitchen in anticipation of LCCMom’s arrival. There are only 5 ingredients and the ingredients are bathed in bacon grease. Yum.

Ingredients:

1 clove of garlic, chopped

1 cup brown pasta (for some reason, CL never calls for brown pasta and I wonder why)

1 hand full of broccolini (spelling? Ya’ll know what I mean right?)

1/2 can garbanzo beans

2 stripes of bacon

Instructions

Cook the pasta in salted water until al dente. While the pasta is cooking, take your bacon and cook it up in a pan until crispy.

While the bacon is cooking rinse off the garbanzos and chop the broccolini. Once the pasta is about half done, toss in the broccolini to the pasta water and let it cook. When the pasta is done cooking, drain it, and separate it from the pasta.

Once the bacon is done cooking, remove just the bacon, pat off with a paper towel and crumble.

In the bacon grease pan add the garlic and garbanzos.

Let them absorb the grease a little bit and then add the broch.

Then, once the ingredients have absorbed the grease (like three mins) add the pasta and combine to serve.

I have made this more than once in the past two weeks and it was delicious. The garbanzos added some much needed protein to this pasta dish. It is no secret that I eat a lot of pasta but I need more protein in my diet and garbanzos are becoming my favorite quick and easy way to get it. I was also worried about dish not having a sauce but hey, when your pasta is coated in “bacon leavings” do you really need sauce? Uh, no. Finally, broccolini has been ALL OVER the FM the past few weeks and so obvi I decided it was time to snap some up. The quality of this broccolini was undeniable. Fresh produce really is the only way to go in my mind!

What are you all up to this weekend? I have a solid amount of work to do for school. We’re already heading into finals prep time. Can you believe it? I feel like the semester just started. I also have running and yoga plans

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