Made carbonara for the first time! How did I wait for so long?

[Molehillmountain]

So easy, quick, cheap and delicious! Think I might have been scared off by the egg bit but it worked fine. Yum.

Ooh scrummy. Can you share your recipie?

Fairly loose interpretation of nigellas recipe in how to eat. Put 200g spaghetti on to cook. Fry 125g bacon (1/2 a standard pack) in 2tsp olive oil -not tablespoons!)for 5 mins until starting to crisp. Nigella says pancetta. Towards end of the 5 mins add one clove chopped garlic (no garlic in nigella's). Whisk together 1whole egg and one yolk (or you can use couple tbsp double cream and just two yolks) and 4tbsp grated parmesan. After bacon cooked, throw in 4tbsp white wine (although mine was rose!) and allow to reduce down for three mins or so. Chuck in a heaped desert spoon ful of butter and the drained spaghetti. Allow liquid to be mostly absorbed. Take off heat and quickly stir in eggy mix keeping it moving to avoid scrambled egg. Season with pepper not salt. Serve. I've made twice this weekend and it was as nice with or without cream. First time used cheddar not parmesan-fine. Also dd was separating eggs so the second time it was two whole eggs and it worked fine. I might not have got it past an Italian chef but it seemed like proper carbonara to me!

Yum- really fancy a ;big bowl of pasta now!

I'd heartily recommend Jamie Oliver's courgette carbonara too - a firm favourite at our house:

m.jamieoliver.com/recipesbeautiful-courgette-carbonara

I also like the courgette carbonara.

I also like Simon Hopkinson's TAGLIARINI CON ZUCCHINI which I've posted here for you.

Any green vegetable can be cooked with pasta, but the beauty of this one (pictured right) is that as courgettes cook so quickly, they can simply be cooked in the same frying pan as the pasta, once it has been boiled.

Tagliarini, which is a thinner version of tagliatelle, is aesthetically the right one to use in this dish, as it will hold the strips of courgettes better than the more string-like spaghetti; shapes and dimensions are very important when it comes to cooking with pasta. Serves 2

200g dried tagliarini (you can use other pasta if you can't get hold of it)

4 medium courgettes, coarsely grated

2-3 tbsp virgin olive oil

Maldon sea salt & freshly ground black pepper

2-3 cloves garlic, peeled & finely chopped

freshly grated Parmesan

Here are some of my own additions:

3 teaspoons chopped basil or parsley

Zest of 1 lemon

Red chilli or pepper flakes for sprinkling

Cook the pasta in plenty of salted boiling water until al dente. Drain thoroughly in a colander, and rinse with warm water. Next, briefly fry the courgettes in 2 tbsp of the oil, with some seasoning and the garlic, in a roomy frying pan until they are wilted and lightly coloured, along with the herbs and lemon zest. Tip in the tagliarini with the remaining oil, and turn and toss together until the ingredients are well mixed, and until the pasta has also taken on some colour. Turn it out onto very hot plates, and sprinkle with plenty of freshly grated Parmesan cheese and red pepper or chilli flakes.

This is how I normally do it, only I use parmesan as a rule (easier to get hold of). I buy the cubes of pancetta. I tend to add less garlic than he suggests, adding it once the pancetta has cooked but is off the heat (so it doesn't burn).

Oh and it is also nice with mushrooms rather than pancetta - use a bit more seasoning though maybe.

I love that recipe nappyaddict I do it at least once a week... 'tis delicious

Have you done it with anything other than courgettes as my DP doesn't like them?

Nigella's carbonara

courgettes or finely chopped (not grated in this case) aubergines, and I add roasted pine nuts. You can't really taste the courgettes as such, it is just delicious though. I think I saw it originally on a Saturday morning kitchen programme.

That's interesting, nappyaddict-nigellas recipe in "How to Eat" is just a bit different with some butter to add along with the wine/vermouth mixture. Perhaps she's trying to reduce the fat just a little-hardly diet food still thank goodness. This one is even simpler to do.