I love it. It may be artery-clogging material, but I’ll make up for it by eating my greens and by faithfully attending my Monday workout, which has already created one new muscle on my left leg called ‘Fred.’ It’s all about balance–I like to compensate for things (read: ‘bacon’) rather than cutting them out, as you may have guessed if you have visited some of my other heavy whipping cream and blue cheese-laden recipes.

This dish is quick to whip up, and dreadfully satisfying to dig into. And even though I’m calling it “rich” in the title, I must emphasize to you that IT IS VERY RICH. You won’t need a ton of sauce to go over your bowl of pasta. Oh, and it’s delicious as well over white rice, which is how I chose to consume the abundant leftovers.

My husband loved it. I loved it. Will you you love it, too? I say there’s a 99% chance if you’re in my immediate family, but a 0% chance if you’re my cousin Luke and can’t eat the pasta (gluten intolerant) or the sauce (lactose intolerant).

Let’s dive in! Get ready for a swim on the dangerous side of sauce.

Ingredients

(Serves 5)

1 lb cooked farfalle pasta

1 lb bacon

1 large onion, roughly chopped

3 TBS dry sherry or wine

1-26 oz can spaghetti sauce*

1 c heavy whipping cream

2 TBS crème fraîche

3/4 c blue cheese crumbles

salt, to taste

1/2 tsp sugar, to taste

generous amounts of black pepper

cilantro or herbs, to garnish

*you can use plain tomato sauce; just add some brown sugar, garlic and dry herbs to create your own flavor

First, chop up and sauté that bacon in a deep skillet over medium-high heat.

While the bacon is cooking, give the onion a rough dice. Once the bacon starts getting brown, add the onion and continue to sauté until the onion is softened.

This whole process can take a while, maybe 12 minutes or so . . . I wasn’t counting.

Now it’s time to drain the excess grease out of the pan. There’s a lot, and we don’t want this sauce to precipitate an immediate trip to the hospital. Grab your baster and suck out the good stuff. I mean, the bad stuff.

Good, bad, bad, good–it’s all just so relative.

Look at all this grease we have successfully discarded:

Now, add the sherry and deglaze the pan, scraping up any brown bits.

Let it boil away a little, for 2-3 minutes.

Add the spaghetti sauce.

I used a dented can from Big Jake, but you can use any kind, really. And if you’re against premade spaghetti sauce, use regular tomato sauce with some spices (garlic powder, salt and pepper, thyme, oregano, some sugar).

Cover the pan and let the sauce simmer on medium-low for about 10-12 minutes. If you are by chance using diced tomatoes instead of tomato sauce, you want to leave the pan uncovered and increase the cooking time here, so that the majority of the liquid boils off.

Now it’s time to throw caution to the winds. Grab that crème fraîche:

And eat some! Seriously, it’s part of the recipe.

See the finger swipes? If you have any sense at all for who I am as a person, you knew this was inevitable.

Add the sugar, cream, crème fraîche, blue cheese, and salt and pepper to taste.

A good substitution for crème fraîche if your grocery store doesn’t carry it is sour cream mixed with mascarpone. Stir the whole creamy mess until everything is incorporated and heated through. Dip in your spoon and take a taste, then adjust the seasonings to your liking. I happened to need more salt . . .

. . . and also more pepper.

Also, if you are a blue cheese hater (I know who you are . . . and have forgiven you. I think.) you can totally skip adding the blue cheese and just add some more crème fraîche or something. I happen to be a blue cheese lover, and I added even MORE! I was in the mood to totally rock my own palate.

And here we have the sauce, in all its perfection. And richness.

Here we reach a fork in the road: if you take the path to the right, you could dump your cooked pasta into the sauce. However, I would advise against that namely because the sauce is so rich that you may not want that much with your pasta. Take the path to the left and leave it up to each individual eater to choose the amount of sauce they feel capable of handling.

Garnish with parsley, cilantro, basil, or whatever herb floats your boat.

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