carbonara

Spaghetti Carbonara

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Spaghetti Carbonara

One of my all time favourite pasta to eat as well as to prepare, the spaghetti cabonara, a cream based pasta that will tantalise your tastebuds and bring you all the way to Italy. Truly, there is no pasta that is so distinctively yummy as this one.

I made my pasta a little more creamy just so you guys can see the texture of the pasta. I am using spaghetti here instead of linguine because I still have spaghetti at home. But that said, linguine makes a better pasta as it can soak up the cream based sauce really well.

I know some recipes call for eggs and parmesan cheese, but my version doesn’t require all these, it is simple, and easy to do. Anyone can do it. So are you ready?

Recipe for 1

Ingredients

125 grams of Barilla Spaghetti
50 grams of Streaky Bacon
4-5 pcs of White Button Mushrooms
4 cloves of Garlic
100 ml of Cooking Cream
15 grams of Salted Butter
100 ml of full cream Milk
1 tsp Black Pepper
1 tsp Mixed Italian Herbs
Pinch of Sea Salt

Method

1. Firstly we cook the pasta in the pot. I use Barilla Spaghetti which cooks in 5 minutes to an al dente. Remember to add a little sea salt and olive oil. If you prefer it a little softer, add a 1 or 2 to the cooking time.

2. In another pot, stir fry the quartered button mushrooms in salted butter. I find salted butter much better to work with as opposed to unsalted butter when it comes to cooking, but if you’re baking, then perhaps unsalted butter might work better for you. Once the fragrance of the mushrooms can be inhaled (lack of a better word!) you should remove the mushrooms and set them aside. Then in the juice of the mushrooms, cook the minced garlic, cooked until fragrant. Then add the chopped streaky bacon. Fry this until the fragrance of the bacon can be breathed (still trying to find a better word!). I am not using olive oil in this recipe because butter goes better with cream in this carbonara recipe. Furthermore the oil in the streaky bacon is more delicious.

3. The pasta should be about al dente by now. You can remove the pasta or continue to cook it longer until it is softer. In the meantime, you add the cooking cream into the ingredients and cook, add the milk to dilute the carbonara sauce a little. If you like the sauce to be a little thicker, you can just use the cooking cream and leave out the milk altogether. Add herbs flakes and black pepper. A little salt to taste. Cook till the sauce is hot. After that drizzle it over the pasta and give it a good mix. Serve with grated parmesan cheese if you like, but it is already quite rich if you ask me.

Bon Appetit!

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Four Sauces (Musing)

Ho Sim Lang

Four Sauces (Musing)

I have always thought that there are only three types of sauces for pastas and never really bothered to explore beyond these three types. To me, that’s it, there is no need for another type, or possibly could be another type, everything is sort of encapsulated in these three sauce base types.

First up, Olive Oil based sauces. These are really simple, healthy (debatable, it’s oil after all) and easy to prepare. Except that you can’t really drizzle knife brand cooking oil (you could actually) all over your pasta, I can guarantee you that it doesn’t and shouldn’t taste all that great. But if you’re sort of choices and you only have knife brand cooking oil to drizzle over your pasta, well then I would strongly encourage you to skip the meal for the day. Nothing is more sacrilegious than to drizzle cooking oil over pasta. I can’t bring myself to do that.

With Olive Oil based sauces, you can literally allow your mind to run freely as far as the rings of Saturn or the diminutive Pluto. You can whip up a mean and green pesto herb sauce, or you could infuse your olive oil (extra virgin is best!) with items like chilli, garlic or fresh garden herbs. These will definitely create a wicked flavour for your pasta. Extra Virgin Olive Oil is best drizzled and not cooked. So please don’t cook your olive oil and then wonder why the oil doesn’t taste as nice as when you had it at some respectable Italian Pasta place.

Next we have Tomato based sauces. So these are your Marinara sauces, your tomato based sauce in a convenient glass bottle that you can easily find in the supermarket. It doesn’t matter if they call it some fanciful name, if it is tomato based, then it is a bona-fide tomato based sauce. All the Italian names are saying the same things as you are, which basically means, tomato based sauce (Ok, I am generalising. But you get my point right?).

Again, with tomato based sauces, you can literally examine and study the varied concoctions that have been developed in the R&D labs of the food laboratory to capture your discerning palate. You can add garlic, chilli, mushrooms, whatever it is that you so desire. The best thing is, it just might work. I like my tomato based sauces in a particular way, so I usually don’t do the take out from the supermarket shelf and strongly discourage anyone that is intending to cook their own pasta to do that. It’s a total cop out to just buy the sauce off the shelf. You have to make it like the guys in Italy do, from scratch, if not, then semi-scratch.

Thirdly, the cream based sauce. This is such a lovely and easy sauce to prepare. Double or heavy cream, intermixed with full cream milk, and you have a very nice creamy liquid texture for the sauce. You can then go on to make the best and more delicious carbonara sauce in the whole world. That’s it. There is no mystery to it. And of course if you like your sauce with all those varied condiments added, infused or mixed into it. There is sure to be a flavour that you would love to pick off the shelves.

However, as an avid cooker of foods. I would strongly discourage you from the supermarket cop out. Try to make the sauce yourself, it would be trial and error but for the most part of it and especially when you have developed your own special blend of cream based sauce, you can literally create magic in the kitchen just like the professionals at the three michelin star restaurant.

Last but not least, and this is a sauce that I recently found out that could be used as a sauce. I basically use the sauce in my chicken stew (Coq Au Vin) to be my sauce for my pasta. I found that Penne works really well with the chicken stew. It’s odd really, but it worked and everyone I know loved it. It is a little unorthodox but heck it, if my son loves it, then I guess it can be done. If you want to try this, you can check out my Coq Au Vin recipe and basically throw pasta into the sauce and you have a very lovely sauce.

Bon Appetit!