Carbonara without cream

I had a lovely New Year’s Eve. A little different from the original plan, a quieter affair, but with pleasant company and good primitive cooking (served by yours truly, of course). The menu was even shorter than the one Magda Gessler recommends. So we had prawns in butter, along with a good board of French and German cheeses and outstanding French charcuterie. A super-primitive combination. And completely hassle-free.

Naturally, all of that had to be washed down with litres of wine, not necessarily French. But what completely surprised me, and what I want to tell you about, was a so-called French bubbly wine—sparkling, I mean. I’m not particularly keen on rosé, but when you’re hosting, you ought to meet people’s expectations, so I bought a rosé for the New Year’s toast. A sparkling one, no less. I have to admit I hadn’t drunk such good „champagne” in a long time (the wine was French, but not from Champagne). A delicate flavour, not excessively fruity, almost perfect. I’ll introduce you to this wine because, although the next New Year’s Eve is still 12 months away, I can happily recommend it for birthday parties, anniversaries and the like. Why? Because it meets several criteria for a good drink: it’s French, it’s sparkling, it’s delicate (so it won’t shock even the fussiest aunts), and it offers extraordinary value for money (in my opinion, of course).

The wine is Veuve du Vernay (brut rose), and it looks like this:

And here you can read about it. I paid around 40 złoty for it at a supermarket (I think it was Auchan), probably no more than that. It’s really worth it; if you don’t need a „Champagne” label but enjoy raising a toast with bubbles, I really recommend it.

But let’s come back down to earth, back to 2015. As you already know from the PrymitywnaKuchnia.pl fan page on Facebook, we tackled our New Year’s hangover with pasta. Once again I wanted to meet expectations, so carbonara it was. And once I’d started frying the bacon, I realised I was out of cream. I mean, there wasn’t any. No cream in the house on New Year’s evening. A disaster! There was a little camembert left, though, and somehow I’d bought some processed cheese portions, and voilà. It worked out somehow, and I’ll immodestly admit that I wasn’t the only one who enjoyed it, so there’s all the more reason to recommend my version of carbonara without cream. Give it a go!

PS

This time, despite the generally poor quality of my photos, I really must apologise for them. They’re not very sharp, but that was the New Year’s hangover for you 😉

At a glance:

Preparation time: 20 minutes

Serves: 2 people

Calories: if you’re sticking to your New Year’s dieting resolutions, close this page quickly 🙂

Ingredients for a slightly different carbonara:

• 10 dag of bacon (thinly sliced, smoked French bacon is best; that’s what I chose)
• 1 clove of garlic
• 1 hen’s egg
• half a Camembert (half of a standard round; mine also had green peppercorns, which is why you can see green peppercorns in the photos—that works too)
• 3 portions of processed cheese (I always use the creamy Hochland variety for cooking)
• a 2 cm piece of hot red chilli (as I always remind you, leave this out if you don’t like spicy food)
• 2 small shallots
• a piece of Parmesan (I had a little stick roughly 2 x 3 cm)
• mixed peppercorns (freshly ground in a mill)
• salt
• olive oil
• pasta (I used thick tortiglioni tubes)
• fresh rocket (the ideal bed for the dish)

How to make carbonara pasta:

I started by cooking the pasta and washing the rocket (you must dry it, either with paper towels or in a special salad spinner, which I have but usually can’t be bothered to use).

Then I heated olive oil in a frying pan and fried the thin slices of bacon, finely chopped shallots and finely chopped hot chilli. After about 6 – 7 minutes, when the ingredients were nicely browned, I added the Camembert, cut into thin slices, and the 3 portions of processed cheese. I turned the „heat” down from 5 to 3 (on my scale of 1 – 10).

This is when you need to stir vigorously and break up the cheese so that it combines properly with the shallots, chilli and bacon. I also seasoned it with salt (not too much) and quite a generous amount of freshly ground mixed peppercorns.

Only now did I crush the garlic, cut it into thin slices and add it to the pan. I stirred again.

Once a fairly thick sauce had formed, I added the cooked pasta (drained and dried) to the pan. I mixed it thoroughly and finally added the beaten egg. I stirred very quickly and thoroughly, then seasoned with a little more pepper. I served the finished carbonara without cream on rocket leaves, sprinkled with Parmesan cut into thin shavings. Enjoy!