Sentenced to Hungarian Pepperoni and Bacon, And What I Did With Them (apologies to all piscatarians and higher)

With the dreaded pepperoni and bacon heckling me each time I opened the refrigerator ("I'm no sausage!", "I'm not chicken!") I decided I wasn't going to subject myself to their taunts for the entirety of my stay in Hungary. I was going to strike back. I was going to cook something with them -- no, I was going to cook them into something --, and even if I ended up with something I could barely stomach, if I could stomach it, I could continue to make and eat that "recipe" so that in time, slowly, I would hack at their not-sausageness and not-chickenness until they vanished. I would eat them out of existence.


So, here is what I did. I cut a chunk of the pepperoni and a thick strip of the bacon, and diced each -- dismembered, is how I like to think of it. Then, with the blade of the knife I shoved them off the cutting board gangplank into a sautee pan. I lit the gas, turned the flame low (a slow, painful flame), and waited for their fat to fry. I struck a light under a pot of water to cook some penne, and stood back. 


Very quickly, the bacon's fat began to glisten and liquify. The more stubborn pepperoni took a little while longer, but soon it too was sweating. I stirred; they sizzled. Heh, heh, heh. Who's laughing now?


The water reached a boil; I tossed in three handfuls of penne, stirred, and stood back. The sautee pan continued to sizzle, releasing aromas that, I have to admit, weren't half bad.


At the nine minute mark of the pasta's eleven minute cook time, I opened a jar of Barilla basil tomato sauce, and dumped have of it onto the rendering meats, stirred, and stood back.


At the eleven minute mark I turned off the flame, lifted the pasta pot, drained the scalding  water, and poured the steaming macaroni into a bowl.


I then stirred the pepperonied and baconed tomato sauce a little more, shut the flame beneath it, and ladled the mix over the pasta. Afraid to face the concoction alone, I poured a big old glass of pinot noir to give me moral support.

And then I dug in. 


It was, in a word, delicious. Seriously. Seriously delicious. So much so that, instead of considering the pepperoni and bacon as my enemies, I now consider them my pals, my gustatory amigos. And when the time comes, you can be sure I'm going to head straight back to the local market and order me some more chicken and sausage.