Pizza. It is a thing beloved by millions of people across the globe, if not billions. It is something that inspires joy, lust, loathe, litigation, and fisticuffs. We all have our own personal journey with pizza; mine started at age five at Keystone Pizza in Mountain Home, Idaho.

Back then (in the olden days) the Chuck E Cheese craze had yet to sweep the nation and kids’ birthday parties were still hosted in backyards in the summer and independent pizza parlors in the winter. Since my parents so fortuitously conceived me in early spring, I have the great pleasure of sharing a birth week with Jesus. There should be a three-month moratorium on sex during spring just so no one will have a chance of being born around the same time as the dude in the leather sandals. I mean, he gets a party that people all over the planet celebrate, so how great can a Podunk pizza hoedown in a postage stamp-sized town be in comparison?

Nevertheless, I made do with what I had, and so found myself and ten of my closest Montessori friends wreaking havoc on pizza and piñatas on December 22, 1982. By then I was vegetarian, so I stuck with cheese and managed passable five-year-old pretension at the pepperoni-lovers of the bunch. Thinking back, I developed my eccentricities a young age, as I also remember secreting red velvet pants into my backpack to put on under my dresses once I got to school. Read more

Bolognara is a smash-up between two classic Italian pasta dishes- Bolognese and carbonara. I suppose I could also call it carbonese, but I like bolognara better- there is something less awkward about it. It’s about the most non-traditional thing ever, and I don’t want to get bludgeoned to death by stalwart supporters of the old world, but it’s really the perfect antidote to the typical holiday fare gracing our tables this season I couldn’t resist. Shhh, don’t tell your Italian nonna, k?

Here’s how it’s done: make Bolognese. Slave over it all day. Sweat. Curse. Accidentally slice your palm to the quick when you use an upside-down boning knife to shove filet down the meat grinder since you lost the little shover mallet tool. Glug half the bottle of wine you earmarked to slosh into the Bolognese sauce because you officially need it more than the sauce does, damn it! Use bacon instead of pancetta because you have homemade bacon and the pancetta from Whole Foods tastes like fat-laced cardboard.

Apologize again for bastardizing the recipe with bacon, but secretly know it’s a pretty good idea. Try not to let the butcher know you plan to grind up his precious veal and pig and cow tenderloins to use in a sauce- he will shake his head and think you’re a pretentious little snob even though you’re wearing rain boots that very nearly match his hip-waders. Shake your head and ponder why butchers and fishmongers sometimes wear hip-waders.

Make bucatini with your handy dandy pasta extruder and spill a quart of semolina all over the freshly-mopped kitchen floor. Deliberate whether to re-appropriate the semolina back into the pasta dough or to toss it. Toss it after toddler Bentley and evil Italian cat Sogno who says “ciao” instead of “meow” both decide scooting through it sounds like fun. Leave the pasta to dry, the sauce to simmer, and decide cleaning out the refrigerator would be a good idea. Start cleaning it out with the highest of hopes. Spy the wine refrigerator next to it.

Give in to the practical voice in your ear telling you cleaning out the wine fridge would be wise and somehow more necessary. Clean out the wine fridge. Explain to readers that in this instance “clean” means randomly remove bottles, open them, and start drinking them. Take Bentley for a walk and bring two sippy cups. One full of milk for him, the other full of something equally soothing for mommy’s nerves.

Have a eureka! moment while pondering how to make the best Bolognese you’ve ever eaten- ADD A RUNNY EGG! Attempt to explain this revelation while on said walk to a neighbor you forgot was vegan AND gluten-free.  Wither at the sheer look of disdain on her face as you remember too late that she won’t appreciate your homemade bacon, ground up tenderloin, or wheat-based pasta just like she didn’t appreciate the time you personally killed a dozen chickens recently.

Race home, toss some duck eggs into the Sous Vide Supreme, come up with a catchy name, and thoroughly impress willing dinner guests with the word bolognara and the dish itself when you plop a perfect egg on top of their bucatini Bolognese.

If you read that title and you still need convincing, there is probably very little hope for you in life. Go back to your meuslix munching and leave the artery clogging to me. Or maybe you need convincing because you don’t know what a bucatini nest might consist of and you cannot fathom why in Yoda’s name one might fry such a thing. In that case, keep reading and I will initiate you into a world so coveted, so special, so pasta-slurpingly scintillating you won’t ever want to turn back.

Bucatini are a type of extruded pasta- long like spaghetti, but hollow on the inside, rather like bendy pixie stix. They are my favorite above all extruded pastas, but let’s rewind. Do you know the difference between extruded versus rolled/sheeted pasta? It’s simple. Extruded pasta is made by forcing dough through a small die, typically resulting in a round shape that would be impossible to achieve using traditional roll and cut methods. Examples of extruded pasta include spaghetti, cappellini, macaroni, penne, and rigatoni. If you are ever in doubt, think of it like this: would I be able to make this pasta using a rolling pin and my own two hands? If the answer is no, it’s probably extruded. Rolled or sheeted pastas include tagliolini, tagliatelle, lasagna, fettucine, and all manner of ravioli and agnolotti.

Want to know a little secret about the difference between rolled pasta dough and extruded dough? Rolled pasta dough from most regions of Italy (there are a few exceptions) typically contains at least egg yolks and often egg whites too. In contrast, extruded pasta is generally made from flour and water. There is an important reason for this. You see, extruded pasta is made from pushing the dough through a small die, usually using a motor (but often just a hand crank) and therefore the dough that comes through the die must not be sticky or it will come out a gloppy mess. In contrast, it’s nice to have some elasticity to rolled pasta dough in order to be able to roll it thin. Eggs enable that.

Various regions of Italy tend to use farina tipo “00” (similar to all-purpose flour), semolina flour, or a combination of both in rolled pasta. In contrast, extruded pasta is almost always made from semolina, which again comes down to texture. Semolina is a more durable grain and so when extruded it holds whatever shape it’s meant to take much better than softer flour might.

When I moved back to the United States from Italy several years ago, bucatini was not easy to find. I had perfected my hand at rolling out sheets of dough, but no amount of coercion could coax my sheets into tubes. With great pleasure and after much ado, I finally bought a pasta extruder. It is an attachment to the Kitchenaid mixer and I am in love with the creations it makes. Extruding pasta is a quick and painless process; however it is important that the pasta has time to air dry completely before being boiled.

I extruded some bucatini to keep me happy on this rainy day, and I got to thinking- I miss egg in my pasta. I thought about serving noodles with a sous vide egg over them, but wanted to use some red pepper I’d juiced to make sauce and didn’t feel red pepper sauce complemented a sous vide egg. Instead, I got the idea to coat cooked bucatini in egg yolk and parmigianno then fry it in little nests in a hot skillet. I served the nests over the red pepper sauce and topped them with pumpkin and bacon. It was very clearly divine intervention because fried bucatini turns out to be one of life’s greatest tastes.

Fried Bucatini Nests on Red Pepper Cream with Bacon and Pumpkin Parisienne

Serves 4. Time: 45 minutes

• 1 lb bucatini
• 3 egg yolks
• 1 c parmigianno reggiano, grated
• 1 cup red pepper juice (made by juicing 3 red peppers)
• 1 cup heavy cream
• 1 tsp paprika
• Salt and pepper to taste
• 1 tsp lemon zest
• 1 lb bacon, chopped medium
• 1 shallot, chopped fine
• 40 small scoops of pumpkin meat (or just cut chunks if you don’t care how pretty)

1. Cook the bucatini in salted water until just al dente. Drain and reserve in colander.
2. In a medium saucepan, combine the red pepper juice and heavy cream. Bring to simmer and reduce by 1/3. Add paprika, salt, pepper and lemon zest. Stir frequently. Maintain a very low simmer until service.
3. In a large skillet, fry the bacon. Add the shallot after two minutes. Stir to incorporate the shallots and bacon, then add the pumpkin. Cook, stirring frequently, until the pumpkin is softened and the bacon is crisp.
4. Meanwhile, place the egg yolks and parmigianno in a large bowl. Toss the bucatini into the mixture and coat with the egg. Place a mixture of butter and oil into a skillet and fry the bucatini until crisped on one side. Flip the bucatini nests and crisp the other side as well. I use a round 4” cutter to maintain the shape of the nests of bucatini, but you could simply pan fry them as well.
5. At service, spoon a bed of red pepper sauce on a rimmed plate, top with a nest of bucatini, then sprinkle the bacon and pumpkin over the top.