Swedish Beer - Part VII / Carnegie Porter - Part II

Since I'm about to move, I figured it would be a good time to bring out one the bottles of Carnegie Porter I have been storing in a dark, undisturbed corner of a cupboard in my kitchen since last fall and see how the taste has developed over the 7-8 months that passed since I had my first taste of it.

I wasn't sure what to expect, but it managed to surprise me no less: Not only is it smoother than I remember it from last fall, but it most notably quite a lot sweeter too - almost (certainly) too sweet for my taste.

However, as I am not moving very far this time, I plan to bring the rest of them with me to my new residence and see how they develop upon further ageing.

To be continued...

Asparagus & Pancetta Linguine

For the May BACC various circumstances forced a number of modifications on the dish - although I believe it still carries the spirit of the original recipe - to wit:

• Fettuccine did not appear to be available where we went shopping, so instead we went for wholegrain linguine.
• Peas are not yet in season here in Sweden and as we did not feel like using frozen peas we left the peas out.
• Turns out we did not in fact have any garlic (and we did not want to fetch some by the time we started cooking...)
• Although we could easily have gotten some Parmigiano cheese, I decided to use the rest of our Pecorino cheese instead.
• Since we are getting ready to move all our graters had been packed down, so for the cheese and the lemon zest we had to go for 'finely chopped' rather than grated - lending the dish a slightly more rustic feel.
• I did not add any olive oil as that seemed a bit superfluous.
• The dark green parts of the scallions were not stirred in but instead sprinkled on top together with last of the basil and parsley.
  

Ingredients:
- ~ 250 g (~ 9 oz) wholegrain linguine
- 80 g (2.8 oz) very finely sliced pancetta, cut in strips
- 250 g (8.8 oz) asparagus, cut in inch-long pieces
- 125 g (4.4 oz) scallions, sliced - parted by colour
- 1 dL (²/₅ cup) cream
- ~ ¹/₂ dL (~ ¹/₅ cup) pecorino romano, finely chopped - parted
- juice of ¹/₂ lemon
- zest of ¹/₂ lemon, finely chopped
- fresh parsley, chopped - parted
- fresh basil, chopped - parted
- salt & pepper

The pasta was boiled in lightly salted water - when cooked the water was poured off, but about 2.5 dL (1 cup) of it was retained for later use.

While cooking the pasta, the pancetta was fried crisp.^[1] The pancetta was removed from the pan and the asparagus pieces were sautéed in the pancetta drippings for 3-4 minutes before adding the paler ²/₃ of the scallion slices. After an additional 2 minutes this mixtures stirred into the cooked pasta and added cream together with lemon juice, lemon zest, about 1 dL (²/₅ cup) of the pasta ccoking liquid, most of the cheese, half of the parsley, and half of the basil. The mixture was tossed and seasoned to taste with salt and pepper.

It was served immediately, sprinkled with pancetta pieces, the dark green slices of the scallions and the rest of the cheese, the parsley and the basil.

Delicious - despite all the short cuts performed. I've had pasta dishes with lemon before, but I cannot think of one where the lemon blended as nicely with the other flavours as in this one.

^[1] Pancetta is sometimes referred to as 'Italian bacon' - like other types of bacon it has been salt cured, but in contrast to most other types of bacon it has been spiced. This was actually my first time ever using it, and I found the spicy bacon smell from frying quite interesting. The variety of pancetta I bought was very thinly sliced (I would say that ordinary thinly sliced bacon is about 5 times as thick as this pancetta) - but since it was my first time buying it I don't know if that is the norm for pancetta.