Last night the mister went to a supermarket on his way home to pick up a few things. While he was there, he saw a tub of carbonara sauce and decided he fancied some of that for tea. Of course then he read the label, felt entirely disgusted, and put it back on the shelf. This is what we made when he got home:
Chicken Carbonara Tagliatelle
Ingredients
A small onion, finely chopped (completely untraditional, don’t use if you’re a purist)
Two chicken breasts, chopped (purists, please replace with a good handful or two of pancetta)
Two cloves of garlic, crushed
100g parmesan or other Italian hard cheese, finely grated
Two large eggs
A middle sized pot of single cream
optional for greedies like us another glug of double cream
Pasta (we used tagliatelle, spaghetti or similar would also be nice)
Other generic kitchen ingredients like olive oil and your preferred seasonings
Then what?
First consider the cooking time of your pasta. You’re in charge of when you put the stuff on, I’m going to assume that when the sauce is ready, so is your pasta. It’s your responsibility to make that happen. Yes, this is entirely hypocritical.
Soften the onion in olive oil. Or butter. When it’s softened and goldened, chuck in the chicken and garlic. Stir until the chicken is cooked.
While the chicken is cooking, crack the eggs into a bowl, add the single cream, and whisk up. It may make more sense to beat the eggs first then stir the cream in, whatever. Add most of the parmesan and mix well. I’d add pepper here. Wonder whether you have enough sauce, and add double cream until you are happy. Consider adding an extra egg yolk or two, but don’t bother this time.
Decide which of your pans is biggest. Use that one for mixing everything together. Drain the pasta that you have skillfully timed to be ready at this exact point, and chuck everything together in the most appropriate receptacle. I guess you could use a serving bowl if you’re that kind of person.
Stir it all up to mix the chicken through the pasta and get the sauce to coat everything. You sort of want the egg to pretend to get cooked as it hits the other hot ingredients.
Serve, with the rest of the parmesan sprinkled on top.
Realise that you should have served salad with it, but decide you don’t care.