As you know, I just love Jamie Oliver and his recipes. The other night on his show he made a delicious and easy to prepare courgette carbonara. Given I had a large courgette from my mother in laws organic garden, I decided tonight was the night to give it a whirl. I was a bit worried about carbonara as I always fear ending up with a plate of scrambled egg pasta, but I surprised myself!
I have written the original recipe below, but you can also find it here . I halved the recipe as I was cooking for myself, with a bit left over, and replaced bacon with pastirma as I don't like bacon but wanted to have that smokey meat flavour. For those of you who don't know, pastirma is a highly seasoned, air cured dried beef. So it's not exactly the same as bacon but it had the desired effect for this meal.
Ingredients
sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
6 medium green and yellow courgettes
500g penne
4 large free-range or organic egg yolks
100ml double cream
2 good handfuls of freshly grated Parmesan cheese
olive oil
12 thick slices of pancetta or smoked streaky bacon, cut into chunks
small bunch of fresh thyme, leaves picked and chopped
Method
Put onto boil a large pan of salted water. Halve and quarter any large courgettes length ways. Cut out and discard any fluffy middle bits and slice the courgettes at an angle into pieces roughly the same size and shape as the penne. The water should now be boiling so add the penne to the water and cook in accordance with the instructions.
To make your creamy carbonara, put the egg yolks into a bowl, add the cream and half the Parmesan and mix together with a fork. Season with s&p and set aside.
Heat a large frying pan and add a good splash of olive oil and fry the pancetta or bacon or pastirma until dark and crisp. Add the courgette slices and a few cracks of pepper. Throw in the thyme leaves and stir everything together so the courgettes become coated in all the flavours and fry until lightly golden and have softened.
The next bit is the challenge. You need to work fast. When the pasta is cooked, drain it, reserving a little of the cooking water. Immediately toss the pasta in the pan with the courgettes, bacon and tasty flavours, then remove from the heat and add a ladleful of the reserved cooking water and your creamy sauce. Stir together quickly and do not return to the heat or you will scramble your eggs!
You should serve immediately. Sprinkle the remainder of your Parmesan over your pasta and and add a little more cooking water if needed in order for the sauce to have a silky consistency over the pasta.
Eat and enjoy!!
*picture care of Jamie website / David Loftus
