Home Cooking with Valerie Bertinelli

Valerie Bertinelli, award-winning actress, best-selling author, and popular Food Network personality, has made a name for herself in households across America. 

As her friends, family, and fans alike know, Valerie loves nothing more than to cook delicious meals bursting with flavor and share them with those she loves.

To really know Valerie is to spend time in her kitchen. And she does just that with her new cookbook, Valerie’sHome Cooking: More than 100 Recipes to Share with Friends and Family (Oxmoor House, October 2017, $30). 

Inspired by her family’s cooking legacy, Valerie specializes in showing fans how to make dishes their own families will love. As she often says, there’s a story behind every recipe, and she shares them in this gorgeous cookbook with a cornucopia of meals that are easy to make and innovative, including Bacon-Caramel Scuffins with Caramel Clotted Cream, Lobster BLTs, Spicy Arrabiata Penne, Lemon Raspberry Panna Cotta and much more.

Step into her kitchen, sample her favorite dishes, pick up a few of her culinary tips and tricks, and stay for her entertaining anecdotes over dessert and coffee!

BLT Pasta

Serves 4

Hands-on 25 minutes Total 35 minutes

This is a rich pasta awash in flavor, one that gives the sense of being especially indulgent yet avoiding cream sauce and lots of preparation.

• 12 cups water
• ¼ cup plus 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
• 2 pounds plum tomatoes (about  10 tomatoes)
• 6 thick-cut bacon slices, chopped
• 1 medium yellow onion, halved and thinly sliced
• 1/2 cup dry white wine
• 1/4 teaspoon black pepper
• 1⁄8 teaspoon crushed red pepper
• 12 ounces uncooked spaghetti
• 4 cups fresh baby arugula
• 1/4 cup chopped fresh basil
• Grated fresh Parmesan cheese

Bring the water and 1/4 cup of the salt to a boil in a large saucepan over high. Hull the stems from the tomatoes. Cut a shallow “x” through the skin on the bottom of each tomato.

Place the tomatoes in the boiling water, and boil about 30 seconds. Using a slotted spoon, remove the tomatoes, and submerge in a bowl of ice water to stop the cooking process. Reserve the salted water in the saucepan.

When the tomatoes are cool enough to handle, peel back the skin using a paring knife. 

Cut the tomatoes in half lengthwise; squeeze out and discard the seeds. 

Chop the tomatoes into 1/2-inch pieces.

Place the bacon in a cold large skillet; cook over medium, stirring occasionally, until crisp, 10 to 13 minutes. Drain the bacon on a paper towel-lined plate. 

Reserve 2 tablespoons drippings in the skillet.

Add the onion to the hot drippings in the skillet; cook over medium, stirring occasionally, until soft and lightly golden, about 10 minutes. 

Add the wine; cook until the liquid is reduced by half, about 3 minutes. 

Add the chopped tomatoes, black pepper, crushed red pepper, and remaining  1/2 teaspoon salt to the skillet; cook, stirring occasionally, until the tomatoes begin to break down, about 5 minutes.

Return the reserved salted water in the saucepan to a boil; add the spaghetti, and cook until al dente, about 10 minutes. Drain the pasta, reserving 1 cup of the cooking water. 

Add the pasta and 1/4 cup of the reserved cooking water to the tomato mixture in the skillet; toss to coat. 

Add more cooking water, if necessary, until the mixture reaches the desired consistency. Transfer to a large bowl; toss with arugula and half of the chopped bacon. 

Divide evenly among 4 serving bowls; top evenly with the basil, remaining chopped bacon, and Parmesan.

Variation: This is easily adaptable to whatever you have on hand, like spinach and linguine instead of the arugula and spaghetti.

Cooking Tip: This is another time I like to sauté my bacon instead of using the oven. 

All those yummy hot bacon drippings.

*Excerpted from Valerie’s Home Cooking by Valerie Bertinelli.
Copyright © 2017 Oxmoor House. Reprinted with permission from Time Inc. Books, a division of Time Inc. New York, NY. All rights reserved.