Pasta with bacon and leeks

Linguine with bacon, leeks and crème fraiche

A Lucy Tilney special:

For this dish you’ll need about one medium sized leek per person, a couple of rashers of bacon each and approximately 500g of crème fraiche, though you won’t use it all unless you’re feeding six or so. A glass of cheap white plonk. Chop up the bacon rashers and fry in a pan with olive oil, carry on until the bacon is crispy.

Chop the leeks lengthwise in half then half again. Dice into pieces about 1cm in length.

There are two routes for this: the lazy way and the more laborious. Add the diced leeks directly to the bacon, cook until soft, then add the glass of wine. This way the crispy bacon gets a bit soft. The alternative is to spoon out the crispy bacon, then add the leeks to the oil. Then the bacon is added back right at the end so it stays crispy.

This dish takes around about 10 – 15 minutes so get your past on early, allow 150g per person.

Once the leeks are soft and coated with the delicious brown bits of the bottom of the pan and the wine has reduced. Spoon over the crème fraiche liberally, probably a tablespoon per person, you’ll need to use some skill and judgement here. Grind over some pepper, add salt to taste.

Drain the pasta and return to the pan, mix in the bacon and leeks then serve.