Lazy W Marie

Carpeing all the diems in semi-rural Oklahoma...xoxo

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spaghetti carbonara

Hello again! How’s your week so far? What’s on your dinner menu? If you have a blank spot and are looking for something quick to prepare, food that’s filling and energizing and undeniably delicious but not expensive, then I have a suggestion: Spaghetti Carbonara. Handsome and I both love this stuff. It’s comfort food you can cook in about half an hour and with pretty standard ingredients. Plus, it’s a great carb-loading meal. I have a long run scheduled for tomorrow, so this was perfect for tonight. And it’s so full of protein that it leaves you feeling full for a nice, long time.

 

spaghetti caronara
This spaghetti carbonara is fast, easy, and delicious!

 

What You Need:
1 pound pasta (Use your fave! I think this works great with angel hair & penne.)
1 pound bacon (cut the slices into thick chunks)
olive oil
minced garlic
2 large eggs
1 cup Italian cheeses (I like to split it between parmesean & mozzarella, the better the cheese the better the final dish, but the green cans of parm work just fine)
sea salt, pepper, nutmeg, & garlic powder if you really want it
so much fresh parsley

See? I love recipes like this that require only ingredients we almost always have on hand. Great for between grocery trips. Great for economizing a meal here and there. Great for feeding each other on busy weeknights between work, school, homework, sports, and everything else under the sun. Spaghetti carbonara is definitely something you could delegate to a sous chef capable of handling hot bacon. And no planning ahead is required!

What You Do:
cook the pasta in heavily salted water to al dente
while pasta is cooking, fry bacon chunks with minced garlic, season as you like (I add salt, pepper, & nutmeg at every stage)
in a small bowl whisk together the 2 eggs with the cheeses & more spices if you like, add a Tablespoon or 2 of olive oil to that
after draining the pasta, return it to your large pot
add the crispy bacon pieces to the hot noodles
add the egg-cheese mixture, working it through to distribute & allow the eggs to cook through
if it’s not slippery enough, if the noodles seem too dry, drizzle some bacon grease over it & continue working it through with forks until the whole pot has a similar coverage & the eggs are mostly cooked
garnish with lots of fresh parsley then devour

I think this dish is a meal in itself. It’s crazy filling with all the pasta, bacon, cheeses and eggs. Then if you add enough fresh parsley it breaks up the heft and savory flavors and you barely need salad. Your mouth feels satisfied and fresh. But that’s just me. I eat several tons of salad per week, so once in a while it’s nice to just fill up on the guilty stuff. And this recipe yields plenty. You’ll spend less than $10 and only about half an hour but still feed yourselves luxuriously.

What do you think? Is bacon on your menu soon? Are you okay with eating almost raw eggs? Tell me what you’re cooking this week. And how many miles are on your training plan. Tell me everything!

By the way, this post is dedicated to Shel Harrington, a fellow Oklahoma Women Blogger who recently shared a mouthwatering nod to National Bacon Day. She writes about marriage with wisdom and humor, and I appreciate her so much!

One cannot think well, love well, sleep well,
if one has not dined well.
~Virginia Wolf
XOXOXOXO

 

 

our most favorite alfredo

I have loved alfredo sauce since I was a little girl, beginning with a shrimp-and-pasta dish I ordered at Red Lobster in maybe fourth grade. My friend Amber and I shared a birthday dinner there. We also wore matching plaid pleated skirts. I used those bendy rods to curl my hair and she wore real Keds. It was awesome. The alfredo flavor and creaminess left a lasting impression on me, and thereafter I ordered it at every single restaurant where I found it on the menu.

Around the third year of our marriage I learned to make it myself and played around with the details until Handsome and I became I am obsessed with the final product. He loves it. He craves it, asks for it, and moans and shivers when it appears on his plate. It is so simple to make but absolutely decadent. Cheesy, salty, thickish, creamy… And it pairs with everything. You can eat it on skinny little angel hair noodles or drizzled over savory filled crepes. It tastes amazing with grilled herbed chicken breast or seafood or, as we enjoyed it tonight, steak.

alfredo plate

 

Alfredo is probably our top choice for pizza sauce at the Lazy W, too. But the way we eat it is a far cry from the jar of thin white sauce you can buy on the pasta aisle. I have to admit, this is also light years ahead of what Red Lobster serves. Here’s our recipe.

A couple of notes: This comes together really quickly, so I suggest prepping the other elements of your meal first. The sauce tends to separate if you let it sit out too long. Also, the butter and two cheeses in the recipe make it pretty salty already, so I do not add any salt. And I am a bonafide salt FREAK. So there you go. Lastly, the following measurements yield about 2 cups of sauce, which because of its richness is more than it sounds like. And the whole thing quadruples well. Not that I ever quadruple anything for two people. That would be crazy.

 

alfredo ingredients

 

Basic Alfredo Sauce:

saute a little minced garlic in olive oil

add one stick of real butter and one half cup of heavy whipping cream

heat it almost to bubbly and as it blends and thickens, season with pepper and nutmeg

then remove from heat and add 1/2 cup parmesean cheese and 1/4 cup of mozzarella cheese

stir it all really smooth with a wooden spoon and add immediately to your base dish (noodles, etc.)

 

And that’s it! Quick and simple.

Tonight I folded the aflredo saucein with about 10 ounces of penne pasta noodles, cooked not even to al dente. The noodles still had lots of bite left in them when I pulled them from their boiling water, because I wanted to finish it all off in the oven while our steaks were cooking. For the final few minutes of baking I sprinkled some extra mozzarella cheese on top. Just because.

 

rich alfredo sauce baked with penne pasta
rich alfredo sauce baked with penne pasta

 

How about you? Are you an alfredo aficionado? How else could you serve it with? What yummy recipes from your childhood are still fixtures in your life?

Thanks Mama Kat for a fun prompt! It totally helped me decide our side dish tonight.

mama kat image

Mama Kat’s Losin It