Pasta with wilted arugula

I posted first about arugula some time ago. Since then, I've gotten to know it pretty well. I've had it on pizza (recommended), on pasta (mostly recommended, but not recommended if also with your standard tomato sauce). It's bitter (the degree depends on the age and farm practices - hydroponic arugula can be quite mild). It's smoky. It goes great with on pizza and with bacon or as a smallish amount of bitter flavor in salad. In this favorite pasta dish, I wilt it either over/in the hot pasta or in a pan with some crisped bacon. Broccoli was added as well in this variant. It's fine without it too.


Here's the very simple recipe sketch for the picture above:

Crisp up some smallish bacon pieces. Get them really crisp. Really. There's nothing worse than non-crispy bacon here. Reserve as much of the bacon fat as you feel comfortable with using in the pasta for extra flavor. Augment it with olive oil if you want.
Place arugula on top of hot, cooked, pasta. Allow it to wilt with the pot lid on. Maybe fold it in to the pasta to help it along and distribute it among the pieces of pasta so that it's not a compacted, matted, blob of arugula when it's done. (I speak from experience.) Remember, its best flavor experience is in counterpoint to the other ingredients, not as a giant spinach-like blob of cooked greens.
Place small pieces of left over steamed broccoli from the fridge in the hot bacon pan to warm.
Add olive oil, bacon grease, broccoli, and crisp bacon bits to the pasta.
Plate pasta and grate some fresh Parmesan on top.