Spaghetti Carbonara

Intro

Today I cooked Carbonara, spaghetti Carbonara! While everyone else here in Turkey is eating cow due to the Qurban feast (sacrifice feast) a very important Muslim tradition, I am eating pasta well I am not such a huge fan of meat especially cow or beef or other nasty things of course except that double cheeseburger from Mc'Donalds probably (can't blame me). I am missing two pasta recipes as I promised some time ago on my blog so even though today I craved for Tuna penne, I said I choose to cook the Carbonara instead. So while I am installing the new iOS 10 on my device I will share with you my own Carbonara recipe since there are bunches of those on the internet I actually have one of my own, so I don't copy cut that.

Carbonara

My first experience with Carbonara pasta was thanks to the Maggi's fast cook sauce, they have this special envelopes with a pasta dust inside in which you just need to add some water or milk, bunch of sliced ham or bacon and is all ready in less than 5 minutes. And I promise you the taste is amazing! But this like before I started to cook professionally if I can say so, about 1 year and half ago, since then I am cooking my own pasta recipes and I like to improvise from the original recipes. But let's get started with the recipe, shall we?

Ingredients :

• spaghetti
• butter (like 1 spoon)
• mushrooms
• onion (few slices)
• garlic (optional)
• egg yolk (depends on how many portions you want to make, i used just one for one portion)
• mozzarella or regular cheese
• ham or bacon
• parsley
• heavy cream
• salt
• pepper

As you can see from the picture above I already sliced up all the mushrooms and ham so you can do that before start cooking.

For the spaghetti I used Ankara brand which is Turkish one, I usually use just my favorite brand from Barilla which is number 1 pasta brand in Italy but this time I did not have home just penne and I noticed almost all my recipes I have used penne, so I said I should switch it up this time.

So get everything sliced up and now we are ready to cook!

Step by step recipe :

-First step is of course to boil the pasta according to the package instructions, around 10 minutes until are boiled up. When they are ready just drain the water and set aside until the sauce is ready.

There is a thing they say about how to check if the pasta is ready and I guess I told you guys this before, but I am not sure... they say to take the pasta and throw it on the wall and if it's stuck in there than it means is ready. And believe it or not I may try this once or twice on my mom's walls, she was angry (funny as hell).

- Next step is to prepare the sauce, get a pan on the fire with a spoon of butter inside. When the butter is melted and hot add the ham or bacon first (I normally use ham from chicken or turkey because in the Muslim traditions they do no eat pork or bacon or any of it, got it? ) let the ham to cook a bit and then add one by one the onion slices and the mushrooms. Let them stir for some minutes.

-in this time you need to prepare the sauce consistence which is the egg yolk, cheese or mozzarella and some heavy cream. Mix all together in a bowl until you get a nice consistency. Add some salt and black pepper.

-add this consistency in the pan and put a bit of water in the bowl to clear it up the rest of the cream and then add it also over the rest of the pan. Mix very well until the sauce is incorporated with the other elements.

-add salt and pepper and more heavy cream, I used a package of 200 ml but I didn't put it all, as I said depends on how many portions you want to cook. Tonight I was dinning alone so was enough for me.

-add the spaghetti into the pan and after mixing very good let some minutes so the sauce gets incorporated with the pasta.

Now the pasta is ready to be served!

Place it on a plate and add on top some pieces of parsley and some more salt and black pepper, the taste of pepper is extremely important for this recipe so do no skip it. If you want you can add more mozzarella or cheese on top for that extra creamy taste.

A close-up of the Carbonara, looks extremely yummy but tastes better!

Serve this with Coke zero of course and enjoyed it while in bed like me reading my favorite lecture so far ''How to be Parisian... '' and make sure to check my review about this book which I posted earlier on!

Stay tune for another pasta recipe which is missing in order to complete this blog post and I promise you the last one will be super yummy and spectacular. Coming soon on the blog!

Until then Bon appétit guys!

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