Thursday, April 16, 2009

Doings of this weekend past...I



It all started with the Meandering - no - the "Mandarin Shrimp". We had intended to get good ole noodles to eat along, but managed to get only spaghetti. That's Italian, strictly speaking, but what is one to do when you have landed in a quirky grocery place (naming no names - but it's listed on the stock exchange and them brothers they don't get along so good) which presumes to stock lasagna and spaghetti and herbs and whatnot, but no good ole noodles.

The long and short (nope not talking of positions now) of it is that we had a little less than half the packet left over, which I thought would make up a genuine Italian adventure. With that in mind I scoured a whole lot of websites (naming no names and giving no references) until I came across -
taa...daaa.... "Spaghetti Carbonara".

I was delighted at all the bacon and cheese, until conscience smote a bit and i did go looking for something low on the fats ..and turned up "lean meat balls and spaghetti". Now..hmmm..believe it or not we like Italian cuisine, but we don't like it with tomato in it....paradoxical as that may sound. So, the next logical thing to do was to google meat balls without tomatoes. Swedish meat balls anyone? It floats around in fresh cream, which sent me running right back to the Carbonara. (But the Swedish stuff will eventually find it's way in the Sashimi-Sushi kitchen rest be assured)

The Carbonara? nothing much.. :-) no really, nothing much at all. Boil the pasta in what i call my "pasta pot", you may boil it in whatever it is that you call your pasta pot. And then drain off the water when done. But ..wait...not all of it, save some, it will be needed later.

Fry the bacon in a wee bit o' oil. You think that's too fatty? It gets better. We need to blot out the fat from the fried bacon on paper towels or umm..no not on your palette, that would be icky.

But ...you don't drain off all of the fat..u save some of it too to saute onions in. Conscience pricking yet? If not, then add the cooked pasta in it, "the saved from draining off all" pasta water and begin mixing like crazy. The pasta needs to have a uniform texture, you see.

In the mean time, what you should have ready on hand, is a mixture of eggs(beaten to death), grated cheese drowned in mercilessly and some pepper and salt to add spice to the afterlife. This mixture is to be poured over the cooking pasta.

If you thought the mixing earlier was crazy, now it goes totally wild. If you don't get wild enough, you end up with little clumps of cheesy omelet on your hands instead of the uniformly coated spaghetti. I did get something pretty uniform and with only a very few clumpy bits, but it was a close thing! Phew! Before getting the spaghetti off the stove, don't forget to throw in the bacon pieces and mix some more.

You're ready to eat at this point after shedding a few tears at the state of your pasta pot. The pasta was a bit aggressive I guess, no doubt on account of where it used to dwell! Look -



Did I mention that we had to buy further spaghetti 'cos the left over was not enough for our collective appetite? Also that we couldn't quite finish off the new packet? So, basically we're back where we started. And now, those Swedish meatballs are going to make an appearance..sooner than later.

2 comments:

  1. Ah yum, carbonara. Yep, you need to take it off the heat before mixing or you get scrambled egg.
    Look forward to the swedish meatballs, I have not tried that and it sounds delish!

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  2. That'd explain it! Thanks for the tip.

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