This is my new favorite pasta dish and my favorite recipe on this site! The only changes I made were I used a whole pound of bacon (it was just easier), I used regular tomatoes (both yellow and red) because I didn't have any cherry ones, and I ended up using green leaf lettuce because my rinky dink grocery store didn't have arugula - I could have used fresh spinach I guess. I also made Chef John's creme fraiche ahead of time (although I could have cut it in half for this recipe - you can find the recipe on this site.) The creme fraiche made this recipe so plan ahead to make this dish. I would not substitue it for anything since I've already done it this way! The creme fraiche didn't overwhelm the other flavors but gave it a subtle richness. I should have taken a picture because the yellow and red tomatoes along with the green lettuce made an attractive dish. My teenagers also loved this and I know my husband would have, but he was out of town and by the time he got home the leftovers were gone. Poor guy. I didn't think it was as good left over as it was fresh though. This dish is now in my permanent rotation forever and always!
This is simply wonderful!! I too followed the directions exactly and found myself gobbling it up which I usually don't do with meals I've cooked. My husband also went for seconds. My store didn't have the creme fraiche so I had to make my own. Super easy recipes online! I'm also a huge fan of BLT's so that might have something to do with my love for this dish. Will make again
I made this with sour cream the first time and we really loved it. I added sun-dried tomatoes for a little more flavor. I wanted to try it with the creme fraiche, so I made it again. We preferred the tang the sour cream added for sure, so I'll be making it again and again but with the sour cream. I omitted the lemon as we didn't care for it in this dish.
This was just ok. Arugula is not my favorite and I should have known the kids wouldn't like it but wanted to follow the recipe exactly the first time. The arugula overwhelmed the dish in my opinion and it didn't resemble a BLT at all because of that. I think perhaps with spinach or kale this would be better.
That was so nice so easy to make.
I made this tonight. It was pretty good, the only request being for more bacon. More bacon is good. The next time I’ll use a pound. As is my custom, I went through the comments looking for suggestions and found a few. Crème fraiche became sour cream. Ditalini pasta became Fred Mayer’s small stuff that was on sale two weeks ago. Argula became spinach. Maybe argula is finer chopped than spinach but four cups of chopped spinach just about overflowed my 12 inch by 1 ½ inch iron skillet. Next time I’ll cut back to three cups. I found a way to cut down on the mess from chopping spinach while at the same time getting it done faster and doing a better job. Having not ever seen a recipe requiring whole spinach leaves, I just chopped up the whole plastic container of Freddy’s baby spinach leaves using the scissor-like multi-bladed chopping tool that the boss cook bought on one of her Pampered Chef forays.
Very good combination of flavors. I used (1) 1lb. box of mini penne pasta 1 lb of bacon. I doubled the rest of the ingredients other than the cream fraise which I used the entire jar I had just made. This recipe is a keeper.
Would have been lovely if AllRecipes hadn't converted "two cups" of pasta to "16 oz" of pasta. Really, I'll learn to ignore what they put on the shopping list - and beware if you haven't already noticed that little "feature". Other than needing double everything because it was too much pasta, it was tasty.
I love this recipe and his other recipes as well.
