Spaghetti alla Carbonara

This pasta dish is something I made a while ago and as I have not made anything special or baked anything latley.
I thought I will make use of something which is lying in my draft.

 

If you ask me is this a authentic recipe I would say NOOOOO as I have had this dish when I was in Italy and it is totally different, the way I got in a plate was with a fresh egg yolk in the middle of the pasta dish etc...

But this is how we love here at home and as I always say cook or make dishes according to how your family and yourself how to have them.

Ingridients:

2 tbsp of olive oil

I small onion finley chopped

2 garlic chopped

200 gm of bacon chopped ( I sometimes use ham instead of bacon)

250 to 300 gm spaghetti

2whole eggs

200 ml cream

Pepper and salt to taste ( just take care of the salt as bacon is already salty)

8 table spoon grated parmesan and plus extra for serving

Heat the oil in a pan, and saute the onions and garlic till they are soft , add the bacon and fry till it is done, in a bowl mix the cream, eggs, parmesan cheese. In the mean time boil the pasta according to the packet instruction .

Drain the pasta and add the pasta to the onion/bacon mix, pour the cream ,egg, paremsan mix and heat everything through.

Add pepper and salt to taste.

Serve while it is hot with extra sprinkling of cheese.



 

Vanilla Panna cotta with Mango Puree

I have made a lot of time variety of panna cotta.
And to be honest some of them were disaster, I do exactly what the recipe saya and they dodnt set sometimes so even though it is such a easy dessert to make every time when I try a new recipe I am always checking to see if it is set or not.
There is nothing worse than making a dessert and then when it is time to serve to your guest you find out that you dessert is not good.
It has happend to me a couple of time and I curse my self for not sticking to the recipe I know which works than trying a new one.

And this recipe for pannacotta works very good.
Main problem I think is the gelatine, when the recipe says gelatine leaves, how do you know how much is the measurement as different brands I have noticed different lenght etc........
So I have given the gms from the packet of the gelatine I used in the recipe, so you can weigh them what ever brand gelating you use.
One ;ain thing is dont be tempeted to add more gelatine, nothing worse than having a rubbery pannacotta and less gelatine as I said they wont be set perfect.

I have tried this recipe couple of times and every time it sets not too runny and not too rubbery.
You can stick to the Vanilla pannacotta recipe exactly and then for the toppingm do what ever fruit you want or topping you want.
I had to hurry up to take the picture as ther ewas only one left and If I didnt hurry that would have been gone too.

Depending on how many you want to serve you can double or triple the recipe.

 



Ingridients for pannacotta

150 ml milk
150 ml cream
50 gm sugar
1/2 vanilla stick
2 gelatine leaves ( the packet I used had 9 leaves and the whole pack of 9 weighed 17 gm, and it is from this pack I used 2 gelatine leaves. So as i am bad in Maths just divide and do the correct amount)

Heat the milk and cream together in a pan with the sugar and the vanilla stick.
When the mix start to boil, less the fire to minimum and let it simmer for 5 minutes.
In the mean time soqk the 2 gelating leaves in a bowl with cold water +/- 4 minutes, when they are soft squeeze the leaves so all the water is drained and add to the milk/cream mix after the 5 minutes of simmer.
Mix every thing well, take out the vanilla stick , ( scrape all the seeds from inside and put the seeds back into the mix and then pour in individual glasses and chill atleast for couple of hours.

Before serving use any fruit as topping.
I used mango, as I only had frozen mango I mixed them into a smooth paste adding a little mago syrup ( I think frozen mangoes are not that sweet) and pour over the top of the pannacotta and serve.
If you are using fresh sweet mango you dont have to add the syrup.