I’ve been asked a few times on Instagram to make a Carbonara. So this one has been in the making for a while. And I was just about to turn to evaporated milk, but honestly, I don’t like creamy sauces with that stuff. I just.don’t. It tastes too fake, and I like thick and heavy cream.
So how do I do this? How is this lightened up exactly? Well. No heavy cream. Not as much cheese. And hooray for no evaporated milk nor cornflour! Because I wanted the real deal.
Keeping with the Carbonara flavours, this pasta dish was insane.
The trick was cream cheese. Yes I know! Cream cheese! Not just for cheesecakes and parfaits — which, by the way, I’m a total fan of. As I contemplated exactly how does one lighten up carbonara, I remembered an olllllllld magazine article I read so long ago, like when I had braces and thought wearing my pants backwards was totally cool…. something about cream cheese in pasta. But I couldn’t remember what?
So anyway, I pulled out some dusty old Italian cookbooks I have here, like 2 year old ones….held my breath and started creating something so beautiful and so creamy while trying to stick to my low in fat but still incr-edible rule, and this.just.kicked.my.ass.
Face-planting was easy. Because adding chicken into a pasta dish like this means fewer carbs consumed, while needing to unbutton a button or two of those backward pants. And whenever I order carbonara, I order it with chicken.
So I had to do what was right, and make it exactly how I like it. Just without the guilt that usually comes after. And yes, if you’re worried about the eggs being all slimy and ‘raw,’ (like I was and became a complete eggy snob reading through the cookbooks) I can assure you that they cook perfectly through into such a perfect cream sauce with the heat of the chicken and bacon. Trust me. … Read More
