Carbonara two ways

 Firstly, happy mother's day, everyone - I love you Mum!

(Me, Mum & Abi - Mallorca 2010)

Anyway, let's get cracking. This is my first blog in what feels like forever! With uni essays out of the way - for the time being - I've finally got some me time, and I feel like sharing. As the weather has been so miserable over February, I've been cooking - and eating - a lot of comfort food. Pizza, chips, cake, triple chocolate cookies, mmm.

Now we can all eat these in moderation, but February has not been a moderate month and this has definitely done my waistline no favours. The carbonara recipes that I'm sharing today, whilst gorgeously creamy, manage to combine healthyish eating with comfort - they're certainly not as stodgy or fattening as the supermarket ready-made sauces, anyway (although I'm not slating these - supermarket fresh carbonara sauce is great for a quick ready meal). The first recipe here is incredibly quick, very simple to follow and perhaps the more Italian-inspired - although I've given it an admittedly "student" twist. The second recipe is perhaps more macaroni-cheese style than carbonara, but the basis is the same; it looks fantastic served and tastes absolutely fabulous.

*Italian Egg Carbonara*

Serves 1
(No photos on here yet, I'm afraid)

1 egg (free range preferable as the egg isn't fully cooked)

Splash of double cream (a tinier splash of milk if you're pushed)

Chopped (cooked) wafer-thin ham - 1/3 of a pack?

30g finely grated cheddar cheese (more if you like!)

100g spaghetti

Lots of black pepper

This recipe is perfect for a quick but filling lunch, and requires only one saucepan to boil pasta in, and one bowl to mix your sauce in. No real mess leftover. Enjoy!

1. Firstly, fill your saucepan with boiling water, add a little salt, and add pasta. Give a quick stir with a fork and leave to boil.

2. While pasta is cooking, crack the egg into your bowl, add a pinch of salt and lots of pepper, and give a quick whisk with a fork. Add around 2-3tbsp of double cream and stir again before grating cheese into the same bowl. Finally, chop ham into small pieces, add to the egg-cheese sauce and mix thoroughly until all ingredients are coated.

3. The trickiest part. Once pasta has cooked (10-12 mins), add a couple of tbsp hot pasta water to your egg-cheese sauce (stir it quickly), before draining about 97% of the pasta water away. Toss the pasta so that the steam and its residual heat is lost. This ensures that when your sauce is added to the pasta, it won't scramble*. After the dry(ish) pasta has cooled for 2mins, pour your sauce into the saucepan over the pasta, stirring quickly, and place over a low heat for 1min to fully heat. Within about thirty seconds, you'll see the cheese has melted and the sauce has thickened. Serve with lots of black pepper and more grated cheese.

*If your sauce scrambles, it's not the end of the world. It will still taste good; just technically won't be carbonara anymore.

*

*Creamy Bacon Carbonara*

Serves 2

2/3 of small tub of half-fat creme fraiche

4-6 rashers smoked back bacon

50g grated cheddar cheese

3 large mushrooms

1/2 onion

1 clove garlic

1 small red chilli

180-200g pasta (we used a gorgeous, curly-shaped pasta that we found by luck)

1. Chop onion, garlic, chilli and mushroom and place a frying pan or wok onto a high heat with a splash of olive oil. Add your chopped veg and allow to soften and brown. Whilst these are cooking, chop your bacon into bite-size pieces. Once the veg are soft and fully cooked, tip into one of your serving plates, and add your chopped bacon to the emptied wok. Add a little black pepper (no salt necessary).

2. At this point, add your pasta and a little salt to a saucepan of boiling water, stir once, and set a timer for 10-12mins. Keep checking your bacon and stir to prevent it sticking and burning.

3. Whilst waiting for your bacon to cook and become crispy (around 5-8mins on a high heat), grate your cheese and set out the creme fraiche, ready to add to the wok. When your pasta has about 4mins cooking time left, add creme fraiche to the pan and allow to sizzle on the hot heat, coating the bacon and taking on a creamy colour.

4. Flavouring your sauce: tip veg back into the wok, coating in the sauce, before adding grated cheese and black pepper. Stir well, making sure that the cheese melts and is distributed across the sauce evenly, before adding a little splosh (not a technical term...) of boiling pasta water from the adjacent pan, keeping your sauce light. Don't panic if your sauce seems too thinned out - it will thicken the longer it boils as more moisture evaporates. Finally, after 2-3mins, turn the heat down to low. The sauce should have reduced a little to leave you a cheese sauce that has a thick, creamy consistency but isn't too rich.

5. When your pasta is cooked, drain (a little excess water is fine) and tip into your cheese-sauce wok, stirring and coating the pasta entirely. Enjoy this one - it's what I've got for dinner tonight!

PS: Have to admit that I was on a carb-binge last week and served this with a (burnt) garlic baguette too - not especially 'healthy' but really very good. Also, you may not want to serve yourself the gargantuan proportions we felt like having on this occasion - you can cut the pasta amounts down if you feel like being good.

 PPS: We made alcoholic slush puppies Friday night - such a great idea! Using a blender, we made one by mixing a cheap WKD substitute and ice, othe other with strawberry daiquiri mix and ice. About a 60-40 ratio of fizzy alcholic drinks to ice. If you don't have a blender or handblender, you can buy crushed ice straight from the supermarket which makes things easier. These aren't very strong but were sweet and alcoholic enough for our night in - obviously you can use whatever alcohol you prefer. Too bad we didn't have any straws!