While we’ve been focusing most of our cooking on vegetarian these days, every once in a while something earns the right to have a bit of very, very good meat mixed in, and for us, my husband’s always-spectacular home-cured pancetta (from some lovely belly I picked up at local sustainable purveyors Skagit River Ranch’s farm store) has been the feature of a number of meals lately. Last night, I cooked up a medley of seasoned black eyed peas, sweet potatoes, kale, purple fingerlings, sweet onion and garlic - basically, a bit of a Southern bowl without the rice, and subbing the kale I had on hand for collards….then topped with a light sprinkling of sauteed diced pancetta.
It was perfect quickie comfort food without a zillion calories and still having the nice little ’salt bombs’ of the pork that we love to bring out the sweet & savory of the veggies.