Mahinda’s Little World

Until recently, I’d completely forgotten about one of my old "standard meals" at uni - "proper" pasta carbonara.

I made it again on Monday night, for what seems the first time in years (and probably has been). Absolutely gorgeous. All too often, I’m guilty of "messing" too much - putting too many different herbs and spices in, and so on. Fine in a curry, but not so good in European cookery.

Anyway, as with all my cookery, it’s a bit rough-and-ready, depending on the ingredients I have to hand, but it goes something like this…

Carbonara for One*

* One Mahinda. A hungry one, at that, but that’s nothing new

1. Get boiling some pasta - spaghetti, linguine or tagliatelle works nicely. Remember to add salt and olive oil to the pan. If you’re using fresh pasta, you can leave this bit until a bit later.
2. Chop some bacon, ham or salami into little chunks.
3. In a large frying pan, heat up some olive oil. Start frying the meat, and toss in some chilli flakes.
4. If you fancy, you can add a shallot or some onion, but not too much. Maybe some mushrooms too.
5. Chop two cloves of garlic and shove them into the mix. If you fancy, some roughly chopped basil, thyme or rosemary too - I suspect that Italians would view this as some kind of heresy!
6. Check the pasta. It should be close to done.
7. Drain the pasta, which should hopefully be al dente.
8. Add pasta to pan and give it all a stir.
9. Turn off the heat and allow it all to cool a bit.
10. Add a splash of cream or milk - just a splash. This’ll help keep the egg from scrambling, and cool things down more.
11. Break open one or two eggs, directly on top of the pasta, and give it all a stir.
12. Finish off with plenty of grated parmesan and black pepper.

Of course, everyone’s got their own method for this one. I’ve made mine up over the years, adding or subtracting bits as I’ve gone along. For a while, I had pesto in there - what was I thinking?!

There’s a great discussion on it all here - including pretty much the same dish that I made. Some use a bit of wine, some pecorino cheese, some view the use of cream/milk as utterly abhorrent. But that’s exactly how things should be!

Inspired by the discussion, next time I’m going to mix the egg with some finely grated parmesan and the splash of cream/milk, rather than adding them all separately.