SPAGHETTI CARBONARA

I had a fantastic evening last night with very old friends. We are all very different characters with different lives so it is wonderful to catch up and hear what everyone has been up to.

Seven of us met as children, Rob had an accident in Thailand on his gap year and is sadly no longer with us. The remaining six have all married people we adore and we try and see each other as much as our busy lives and a few Continients allow ...

Over the years there has been sailing, weekends away, babies, films written, films made, books published, companies run, clothes designed and baftas won ... to mention a few snapshots of our busy lives ...

This business is what has inspired my recipe today. I mentioned my blog ... (which Tobes and Miriam suggested I write last November ... it took me a while but I got there in the end ... a big thank you) and became very aware that I am incredibly lucky to be at home with all this time to cook.

So todays recipe is my version of spaghetti carbonara. It tastes delicious and will feed two quickly when your busy life has rather taken over:

SPAGHETTI CARBONARA - Serves 2

Ingredients

200g Spaghetti, 1 Large red onion, 2 eggs, 2 Cloves of Garlic, 70g Pancetta, 50g Grated parmesan, Olive oil, Salt and Pepper

Slice the onions and place in a frying pan on a low heat with a generous slug of olive oil. Allow to cook for ten minutes, stirring every couple of minutes. While cooking boil the kettle, grab yourself a drink and lay the table
After ten minutes put the spaghetti on to cook
Once the spaghetti is on, add the pancetta to the onions and peel the cloves of garlic. Once peeled add them straight into the pan with the onions and pancetta, don’t worry about grating it ... this is a quick version.
Crack one egg (it should be room temperature) into a mixing bowl, season with salt and pepper and beat. Seperate the other egg, at the yolk to the bowl and put the white aside, you do not use it in this recipe.
Once the spaghetti has cooked, drain it and throw on top of the eggs and mix throughly for 20 seconds. The eggs will cook in the heat from the pasta and create a sauce
The pancetta and onions should now be cooked and starting to slightly crisp, remove the cloves of garlic and mix the onion and pancetta and all the oil into the pasta with 3/4 of the Parmesan
Stir the pasta again and serve
The remaining parmesan can be sprinkled over the pasta once served

Cooking notes

This recipe uses spaghetti that takes 9-10 minutes to cook. If you use quick cook you will need to wait slightly before cooking it.

The eggs need to be room temperature when you make this so you are not having to bring them up to temperature and then cook them using the heat from the pasta. You use the extra egg yolk to add richness to the sauce. You can make a small batch of Meringue with the white or frezze it and wait till you have a couple more whites to make a large batch of Meringue.

If you are concerned about partially cooked eggs in this dish please read my comments in the notes section of my blog.

Adapting

You can play around with the ingredients in this dish. I use red onions for their colour, if you don’t have them use regular onions. If you don’t have pancetta bacon will do and Parmesan can be replaced with Gruyere.

Comments

You can follow this conversation by subscribing to the comment feed for this post.

Oh good - a recipe for proper spaghetti carbonara - so many make a creamy sauce which is not the proper Italian carbonara - nice enough but not carbonara! (one of my bug bears in case you hadn't guessed!)

Posted by: Janet | 10/16/2011 at 12:53 PM