Lunch-time Adventure

Having stayed at home for the past 3 days to "piah" my dissertation paper, I got really bored and decided to try something interesting for lunch. I have grown quite sick of eating rice with soup, mee with soup, kway tiao soup etc. That has pretty much been my diet at home since my mum thinks I should eat "healthy" food since I am still trying to get better from my cough. Don't be mistaken. It's not that I don't appreciate my mum's cooking. It's just too much of a good thing for now. The idea of ordering from Thai pan downstairs didn't seem too appealing either so I decided to be adventurous and cook something for my self. I had a certain craving for Carbonara. Short of paying over $10 for a plate of delicious pasta at Cafe Cartel, which incidentally is one of the best I have tried, I decided I shall try to make it by myself.

I don't profess to be any kind of master chef, though give me Google any time and I can follow instructions pretty well. Read more about my cooking experience after the break.

Here's a recipe I found on Yahoo Answers.

From someone called, iliketorideigohago...
(clicke here for other variations of the recipe)

This is the BEST dish ever - my mother calls it my 'signature dish'.

INGREDIENTS:
Right - you'll need eye bacon (about four slices per person) or streaky bacon (whatever your preference). Streaky has a lot more fat, so will be a lot more salty.
2 x egg yolks
Parmesan Cheese (grated) (about half a cup)
Cream - around 350 mls
1 or 2 garlic cloves
Portabello Mushrooms - about 3 large per person

Pasta - fresh and long works best, as it absorbs the flavours.

METHOD:
Cut the bacon in to strips - about 4 or 5cm long, and 2 cm wide.
Put bacon in to medium heat pan (with a touch of olive oil in the bottom) and leave to get crispy.
While bacon is cooking, put raw eggs in to bowl or jug and add parmesan cheese. Mix together.

As the bacon is getting crispy, put the water on for the pasta.

Turn the heat down on the bacon once crispy, and add the one or two (finely chopped) garlic cloves. Once garlic has cooked, add enough of the cream to cover the bottom of the pan, and let simmer.

When the cream has reduced sufficiently (it needs to be fairly thick, but not completely reduced), add the portabello mushrooms (your choice -leave them whole, or slice thinly) I prefer to slice them.

Cook until mushrooms are done and add plenty of cracked pepper.

Ensure that the pasta is done at this point, and drain and put in to warmed dish. take the parmesan / egg mixture from before and mix in to the warm pasta. make sure you mix quickly, otherwise the raw egg will cook and bind to the pasta.

Now add the bacon / cream / mushroom mix to the pasta and mix around (toss).

Grate some parmesan on top, and cracked pepper - and voila!

IT'S AWESOME!

So I went down to the convenience store at my place which didn't turn out to be that convenient at all since I could not find everything I wanted to get. No cream, no parmesan cheese. After some deliberation, I ended up buying a packet of Linguine, a packet of white button mushrooms and a bottle of Prego's mushroom and herb sauce, costing me a total of $11.55. (Now, maybe I should have just gone to Cafe Cartel.)

By the looks of what I managed to buy, I had some improvisation to do. Digging through my well-stocked-by-mum fridge, I managed to find some nice bacon streaks and a big packet of what looked and smelled like parmesan cheese and started cooking away! Chopped the garlic, sliced the bacon, sliced the mushrooms, boiled water for the pasta, put in some butter, put in pasta when water was boiling. PRESTO! It is done! Ha ha. Not quite lah. Anyways, I managed to almost burn the bacon since I think I put the fire too big Also, the cream sauce end up being a little too thick for my liking. Oh, and yes, the pasta was kind of a little tough (not enough boiling time).

I wished I had taken a photo of the final product for all of you, but I finished every bit of it before I could spell B-L-O-G. Loved the bacon. Anyway, the pic above CLOSELY resembles it I promise. And did I mention I made a small mess of the kitchen? Ha ha. I've cleaned it up, and left no evidence lying around. I'll cook it again for any of you if you dare to try...