One of my wife’s favourite dishes is my take on spaghetti carbonara. It’s a tasty, smokey, creamy meal that is pretty quick to make

Let me show you how I do it!

For this one, you’ll need the following:

• 100 grams of lardons (or pancetta)
• 1 medium Spanish onion
• cremini mushrooms (usually about 2 handfulls)
• 2 large eggs
• 100 grams of grated Parmesan cheese
• 250 grams of spaghetti

As you can tell, my recipe has a very flexible measuring method. Remember, recipes are guidelines. Unless you’re baking or making candy (oh, the horror stories I have!), feel free to put in the amount that feels right for you. If you’re a big fan of bacon (YES YOU ARE), go ahead and put in more!

Start by grabbing a nice, deep frying pan and adding some olive oil.

Once the oil is heated cook up the lardons. For those of you not sure what that is, it’s just chunks of bacon. You can also use pancetta, which is equally awesome!

Let that cook until the fat starts to go clear

Now, we chop the onion …

You’ll want to slice it into bite-size pieces. If you refrigerate the onion ahead of time, you’ll find it much less ‘tear’ inducing when you chop it

Unfortunately I don’t often take my own advice.

Add the onions to the lardons and cook until the onion starts to get tender

Quarter the cremini mushrooms. Again, this is MY version of spaghetti carbonara so if you aren’t a fan of mushrooms, go ahead and leave them out!

Add the mushrooms to the pan and let the whole thing cook while you get a pot of water boiling.

Okay, you’ve got the water boiling … so let’s add the pasta!

You want the spaghetti ‘al dente’, so around 7-8 minutes.

Now that you have the spaghetti boiling and the pan is cooking, let’s go make the wonderful, cheesy, goopy sauce!

Crack your eggs into something it will be easy to pour from. I like to use a measuring cup.

That’s one …

Two eggs … let’s do this!

Some nice hot chili flakes should give the sauce just a bit of a kick

Add the Parmesan to the eggs

Now whisk until all that cheese is mixed up with the eggs. You should have something that basically looks like a yellow paste at this point.

Go grab that perfectly al dente cooked pasta (I know you did it right, I trust you!)

Add the spaghetti to the pan and mix it well. At this point you can take the heat down to low.

Pour your goopy egg and cheese sauce into the pan …

Now stir!

Our cat Mogget cheers me on, voicing his encouragement. Let him encourage you!

Keep on stirring, you should notice that the sauce is starting to thicken from the heat of the food.

And there you have it!

One dish that is simultaneously pasta, cheese AND bacon!

Bon apetit