My first recipe from Nigella’s How to Eat. awesome!

In Nigella’s recipe, she uses 4tbsp of Noilly Prat (or white wine), which I didn’t use, I mean, it’s quite wasteful to buy a bottle of white wine and use just 4tbsp of it.. OH and yeah, this recipe feeds 2.

Spaghetti Carbonara with Pancetta and Broccoli

Nigella’s way

200g spaghetti (or just grab as much as you need)
2 tsp olive oil
100g pancetta
4 tbsp Noilly Prat
1 egg yolk
1 whole egg
2 tbsp freshly grated Parmesan
black pepper and fresh nutmeg
1 mounded tablespoon butter

Put some water on and when its boiling, add a decent amount of salt and then, when its boiling again, the pasta. Cut the rind off the pancetta and put the rind in the pan with the oil on medium to high while you dice the rest of the pancetta, or cut to chunky pieces. Then add it and fry for about 5 minutes, until beginning to crisp. Throw in the vermouth and let it bubble away for 3 minutes until you have abt 2 tsp or so of syrupy wine-infested bacon fat. Remove from the heat.

For the egg mixture, simply beat yolk and whole egg, cheese, pepper and nutmeg with a fork. When the pasta’s ready, quickly put the bacon pan back onto the heat, adding butter as you do so. Give the pasta a good shake in the colander and then turn it into the hot pan. Turn with a spatula and wooden spoon, or whatever works, and then when it’s all sovered and any excess liquid absorbed, turn off heat and pour the egg mixture over the bacony pasta and quickly and thoroughly turn the pasta so that its all sovered in the sauce. Dont put back into the heat or else u’ll have scrambled eggs.

Spaghetti Carbonara with sliced Pork Mushroom balls and baby spinach(hidden)

My way

For the egg mixture, mixed 1 egg yolk with 1/3 cream, instead of 1 yolk, 1 whole egg. First, I cook the meatballs and slice them. Put them in the pan, and heat up together with the al dente spaghetti, then turn off heat and stir in the egg mixture. Served on a bed of baby spinach.

And then I find that the sauce is too thick. So I decided (the next day) to use 1 egg yolk, with half cream half milk. This time around, I used some pancetta but it was the rolled ones, not the ones that look like siu yuk (a type of chinese bbq pork – one with crispy skin and layers of fat and meat) Anyway, I blanched some broccoli as well. This time around, the sauce wasn’t that thickening and it was good!! (pic top of post)

Maybe next time, I’ll try the original Nigella recipe. haha.. maybe not so soon.. (cause I have cream laying in the fridge, I just wanna finish it up asap, u know what I mean…)