BLUE CHEESE CARBONARA

As I have mentioned in my blog previously, my daughter Arabella's favourite dish is carbonara - she would eat it every week if she could. I really like it but it's not my favourite. However I saw this recipe of carbonara with blue cheese in the Sunday Times magazine and I thought it had my name all over it!! It is a Jamie Oliver recipe and he does suggest adding pears to it which I left out as I hate sweet and savoury but if you like that kind of thing just add a couple of thinly sliced pears to the frying pan with the garlic and rosemary.

Here is the recipe for 3 people and it took about 15 minutes.

Ingredients for 3 people:

3 large free-range egg yolks
2 tbsp creme fraiche
100g Stilton
350g dried spaghetti (or similar pasta)
A small knob of butter
Olive oil
8 rashes of smoked streaky bacon, sliced into 5mm pieces (or thereabouts)
A few sprigs of rosemary, leaves picked and chopped
2 garlic cloves, peeled and finely chopped
Juice of half a lemon 
Rocket leaves to serve

Crack the egg yolks into a bowl, add the creme fraiche, season and whisk with a fork.

Crumble in the Stilton as finely as you can and stir in (mine was pretty lumpy but it melted when you add it to the pasta)!

Cook the pasta according to the packet's instructions in a pan of salted boiling water - mine took 8 minutes.

At the same time in a frying pan, melt the butter with a drizzle of olive oil over a medium heat.

Add the bacon and fry until golden, stirring all the time.

Then add the rosemary and garlic and fry for another couple of minutes.

Drain the pasta but reserve a couple of cups of cooking water for later.

Add the egg, creme fraiche and cheese mixture as well as the bacon, garlic and rosemary to the pasta.

Add a squeeze of lemon and some of the cooking water (add a splash at a time) and mix all together as quickly as possible.

Serve immediately with a few rocket leaves scattered on top.

This was absolutely amazing!! Pascal rated it as his favourite ever pasta dish and it could be mine too - it worked wonderfully and we also used gluten free pasta as then we don't feel so stuffed afterwards. Arabella prefers Pascal's Pasta Carbonara as she isn't a huge fan of blue cheese but she still ate the lot. The best thing about this dish is even though it was cheesy, it still tasted incredibly light. I would highly recommend it!