Food #ICook | Spaghetti Carbonara with Shitake Mushroom and Beef

I've tried making pasta carbonara a few times before and this one has got to be my best end product yet .. I mean, it's the closest to those I've had in restaurants. So I'm really excited, I feel almost like a pro now haha.

The big difference from those that I've made before was in the consistency and richness of the sauce; this time around my carbonara sauce was thick so it coated the spaghetti noodle really well. Where as before, they used to be thin and runny almost had no body at all.

As you can see, these are the ingredients;

I used:

1/3 of a pack of spaghetti noodle (feeds 2-3 pax)

2 large fresh shitake mushrooms, sliced

1/4 red bell pepper, diced

2 large cloves of garlic, finely chopped

1/2 medium sized onion, chopped

A handfull of sliced, pre-cooked beef (mine was boiled, you could just saute in minimal oil)

1 egg yolk

2 tbsp sunflower oil as olive oil substitute

Whipping or cooking cream 

Fresh thyme (my favourite) or any kind of herbs of your liking

Crushed black pepper and salt to taste.

This is only the third recipe I've posted here but you should know by now that I don't measure my ingredients hahaa .. eyeballing is the way to go here :P 

Cooking it:

1. Boil the spaghetti noodle for around 10 minutes. Instructions on the package haha or until al dente (cooked but still firm to bite).

2. Heat oil in frying pan.

3. Onion, garlic in. When the onion turns soft, almost transparent and before the garlic turns too brown add in bell peppers, beef, mushroom and a sprig of thyme-torn. 

4. Stir until everything wilts and get  lightly caramelized (or has some brown effect).

5. Sprinkle some crushed black pepper to taste.

6. Pour in some cream; the amount depends on how much sauce you'd like. It should cover your pasta. I prefer to have some excess sauce so I used around 1 1/2-2 cups (or a bit more :D).

7. When the cream starts to bubble, add the cooked spaghetti noodle. (You could cook both pasta and sauce concurrently but the former should be on the stove first.

8. Toss around the spaghetti until all the noodle is evenly covered. 

9. Sprinkle some salt to taste.

10. Turn off the heat. Add the yolk into the excess sauce on the side of the pan and not on the pasta noodle and quickly stir it in. You'll notice the sauce thickens as you are stirring. The temperature here must not be too hot or you'll end up with scrambled egg in creamy pasta instead haha :P Just to be on the safer side, you could also take the pan off the stove before adding the yolk. 

If you get this right which I hope you would, the sauce will coat and stick to your pasta noodle and it would be time to start plating ;)

The consistency of this sauce makes me a happy camper ^^

Just leave out the beef if you don't like or don't have it in your pantry, it'd still be good.

Happy cooking!

PS: If you'd like to have this with a few garlic bread slices on the side, I have the recipe here. Dip your GB in that sauce and you'd be transported to another world .. yummm!