Review: Linguine with Pancetta and Parmesan J/F '02

[pmmahan]

This was good. Not exciting, but a very good, quick weeknight meal.

The grocery store near me did not have pancetta, so I used capicola (the recipe also said you could use ham), but I think the pancetta would have had a good smoky flavor.

If you have homemade tomato sauce on hand, I would use that. It makes a difference. I bought some Newman's Own, thinking that it might be better than Ragu or whatever, but it still too sweet for me.

Otherwise, a good, solid meal.

[Peggy]

Patti!

Great to see you posting reviews again! I don't have my Jan/Feb issue yet but am glad to see that others have theirs and they are trying the recipes. It will give me a good idea of what's good once my issue arrives.

Welcome back!

Peggy

[DSH]

I'm jealous! I know we live near each other and I'm still waiting for mine!!

[RunnerKim]

I agree with Patti on this. Very good but nothing really fantastic. But for a fairly simple meal, it will go in my repeater binder. I did use homemade sauce but found it to be way too much. I weighed out 26 oz. I ended up cooking up probably closer to 16 oz. of pasta (homemade and I didn't weigh it) and mixed it all in to get the right sauce to pasta ratio (our prefrence and what the picture looked like). However, that caused the olives to be short and i would have liked to have had more of them in the sauce.
I was able to find pancetta. It was very thinly sliced, like proscuitto, and therefore provided overall flavor but I didn't specifically know I was eating a piece of pancetta. I couldn't imagine this sauce with chunks of ham in it though.

Kim