After attending the latest exhibition at the Tŷ Pawb art gallery in Wrexham, which has a handy car park overhead, we popped in to the Polish supermarket just outside the Market Street entrance to Tŷ Pawb.  From the outside looks it looks somewhat unprepossessing, resembling an abandoned 1960s post office pasted with advertising flyers, but don’t be put off because inside it is bright and fresh, and as neat as a pin.  As well as a range of Polish goodies, I came away with two enormous fresh king oyster mushrooms.

The mushrooms and some excellent bacon that I already had at home cried out to be made into a spaghetti carbonara, with the addition of some fresh parsley from the garden. This is an excellent dish if you are in a rush, because it takes about 15 minutes to cook in total, and the magical thing about carbonara is that the sauce tastes superbly creamy without a hint of dairy approaching it, achieved by mixing egg yolks with some of the starchy pasta water. It is one of my favourite dishes.  Simply leaving out the bacon turns it into a vegetarian dish.

My recipe differs from a traditional carbonara in that it adds mushrooms, occasionally uses chunks of ham or bacon instead of pancetta, has a lot of parsley stirred in along with the egg mixture (and often chives and baby spinach leaves or wild garlic leaves too), and has slices of red chilli (raw or cooked) and spring onion discs sprinkled over the top.  The chillies are partly for a tiny touch of heat, but also to lend some colour to an otherwise rather bland-looking dish.  The pallid colouring is, of course, one of a carbonara’s key characteristics, as is the subtlety of the flavouring, so you may want to leave out the chillies.

If you want a simple, authentic and excellent carbonara recipe, I would suggest you go to the one by  Jamie Oliver, which is based on a recipe that he learned from Gennaro Contaldo (so it has a good pedigree).  You can find it here on Jamie Oliver’s website.

If you want my  version, here it is (for one person, which makes it easy to scale up).  For the mushrooms, bacon/pancetta, parsley, spinach etc I don’t use precise quantities, I just chuck in what I feel like on the day, depending on how hungry I am:

• As much spaghetti (fresh or dry) as required, but I use about 40g, (which works well with  two egg yolks)
• Oil, preferably garlic oil.  If you are using pancetta, which is fatty but renders down nicely, you can fry the pancetta without oil.
• A clove of garlic if there’s no garlic in the oil or if you are not using oil (just to add a touch of flavour, not enough to dominate)
• A couple of tablespoons of thick, diced ham, bacon chunks or pancetta cubes
• A couple of tablespoons of chopped mushrooms, of the sort that won’t disintegrate when cooked, like king oysters, chestnut or supermarket button mushrooms. I used one whole king oyster mushroom for one person.
• An egg yolk per person, or two if you are feeling like a silkier, more indulgent sauce
• Parsley, chopped
• Spring onions, chopped
• Optionally, some softer wild mushrooms for additional flavour, particularly if you are making a vegetarian version
• Optionally, parsley, spring onions (chopped), chives (chopped) and/or spinach leaves or wild garlic (ramsons) to stir in
• Optionally, red chillies, as hot or mild as you like to top finished dish

If you want to add some interest to a vegetarian mushroom carbonara, some diced or spiralized courgette works wonderfully for texture, and as mentioned above, I like to chuck in a handful of baby spinach leaves and add spring onion and/or chives.  Ramsons (wild garlic leaves) are terrific in spring.

1. 

   With mushrooms, spring onions and chilli

   If using dried spaghetti, put this on now.  Your packaging will tell you the exact timing, but it’s usually 12-15 minutes from when the water comes to the boil.  Fresh pasta only takes around 2 minutes from boiling point, so leave that til you are very nearly ready to plate up.  Remember to retain some of the water in which you boil the pasta.

2. Heat the oil if using and put in your mushrooms.
3. If using pancetta, cook separately until the fat has rendered down into oil.  If using ham or bacon bits, add to the mushrooms to heat through. Stir in crushed garlic, if using
4. Separate your eggs and mix the yolks together with a tablespoon of grated parmesan cheese, some black pepper and a teaspoon of cold water to loosen the mixture
5. Add spinach, if using, to the pancetta/bacon with a bit of water to help the spinach wilt
6. When the spaghetti is ready, add it to the bacon and spinach and stir.
7. Remove from the heat, Add in the egg-parmesan mix and stir quickly, together with the parsley and chives if using.  Sprinkle grated parmesan, spring onions and chilli over the top and serve with a black pepper mill to hand.

The same dish cooked and consumed this very day: minus mushrooms and with bacon lardons instead of rashers, and with wilted baby spinach leaves stirred in.

For other eggy recipes on this blog:
https://basedinchurton.co.uk/category/churton-eggs/