Leave me loadsa lovely comments for the totally random post! xD

Anyways, I just woke up this morning and decided I wanted to cook myself some carbonara! I'd already bought the ingredients prior in another shopping trip with mom so all there was to do was to get off my lazy ass and cook it.

And if you're wondering, yes, this recipe is so easy that even a blind monkey could do it.

Make sure you read carefully all the way through before using this recipe. I left a lot of post-notes, with lessons learned.

The ingredients I used (to serve 2) are:




These that I got from the supermarket were pre-sliced, so it saves you tons of time! It said "pieces and stems" on the can so I suppose you just have to look out for that.



So here we go!

Step 1: Cook the linguine.


To a pot of boiling water, add some oil. The packaging for the linguine said it didn't require oil, which sounds strange to me so I added a tablespoon or two just in case.

Also, Nigella Lawson (who is the queen of cooking, so whatever she says must make sense somehow) said that you should add as much salt to the boiling pasta as there is salt in the Mediterranean sea. That probably means quite a lot of salt, so I dumped in two hearty tablespoonfuls of salt. You should only add this after the water comes to a bubbly boil and you've put in the linguine. This way you won't have to wait as long for the water to boil initially.

Step 2: Cook the bacon.


While that is cooking, cook the bacon in about 2 tablespoonfuls of oil. Make sure to let it cook through till the fat is dissolved slightly and the edges are a little brown.

Step 3: Add mushrooms and hot dog franks.


To that, you add the hot dogs and button mushrooms. These don't require much cooking so just let them sit in there and absorb some of that bacon juice.

I know carbonara is not supposed to have mushrooms nor hot dogs, but I like my food that way. You can skip these if you want.

And crap. Right now when I'm typing this post only do I realize that I forgot to take one photo. So anyways.

Step 4: Beat the eggs and mix in cheese.

+

JUST IMAGINE OKAY.

Beat the eggs (not the yolks that you've separated) and to that you add the parmesan cheese. Don't worry too much if the cheese doesn't melt, it'll do that later on in another step.

Step 5: Drain the cooked pasta.


Once the pasta is done, drain it! Pour about 1/3 to 1/2 a cup of starchy water (from the boiled pasta) to your egg/cheese mixture and give it a good stir. This will help make it more solid or something. You're supposed to cook the pasta till it's al dente, which I have no idea how soft it is. So just cook the pasta till however soft you'd like it (as you can see, mine is pretty hard because I like it that way) and you're good. Who needs to listen to those chefs anyways!

Step 6: Add pasta to cooking ingredients.


Throw the drained pasta into your pan of cooking ingredients and toss it around. To make sure the ingredients are not clumped in a corner you know? Common sense stuff.

Step 7: Add cooked pasta/ingredients to egg cheese mixture.


Once that is more or less done, pour the hot pasta and ingredients into a huge bowl with the egg and cheese mixture. Quickly stir it around to mix the sauce with the pasta well. The eggs might cook if you do this too slowly. See the white specks in the picture? They're the melting cheese. YUM.

Step 8: Add yolk to finished carbonara.


As the step says, add the yolk to the carbonara. Just in case you don't even know this, the yolk is supposed to sit in the center of the bowl/plate.

And there you have it! Carbonara!


Yes I know it looks good. Stop drooling. It tastes really decent too! For a first try at least. :D

Post-eating notes (VERY IMPORTANT SO YOU MUST READ.)

Step 1: Nigella Lawson lied. Or for carbonara at least. The bacon itself will already be salty enough so adding salt to your pasta will just make the whole thing really strong. Which is fine if you're me, but generally I'd advise against it. Just add a teaspoon or two of salt to get it going.

Step 2: Honestly, too much bacon. In fact, too much ingredients. To serve 2, you'd probably need 100g of bacon, 3 hot dog franks and half a can of button mushrooms. You could otherwise be generous and add 150g of bacon, then skip the hot dogs and mushrooms altogether.

Step 4: Parmesan, unlike mozzarella, does not do well if abused and overused. I'm guessing 40g of parmesan should be fine if you reduce the bacon.

And this is the heart-stopping part: 4 eggs is NOT enough for 2 people. Traditional carbonara would ask for cream, but that is just too tricky for me so instead, you might want to up the eggs to 6 and separate 2 yolks for topping later.

Step 5: Do not add that much starchy water to your mixture. LOL. Add about a quarter cup will do.

I really don't think anyone should take my advice when it comes to cooking, but if you really do try this out, let me know how it goes! Please don't sue me if you die of food poisoning or something. Oh and as you should have already figured out, this recipe is really unsuitable for children because of the non-fully-cooked eggs.

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