Asklemmy

Here's a carbonara dish:

Ingredients

• 500g/1lb pasta

• 1 brown onion, finely diced

• 2-5 cloves garlic

• 1 capsicum

• 1 punnet white button mushrooms, thinly sliced

• 2 egg

• 1 cup grated cheese - plus extra for serving

• 1/2lb / 100g shaved ham (or bacon), roughly chopped

• 1 courgette, grated

Steps:

1. Bring a big pot of salted water to the boil (plenty of salt) Cook pasta in pot of boiling water for until just tender (depends heavily on which pasta, check back of pack for cooking time, and take a minute or two off then eat a test piece to see if it needs more). Reserve 1 cup pasta cooking water, then drain. Return pasta to put with a drizzle of olive oil to prevent sticking. Set aside.

2. While pasta is cooking, heat a little oil in a medium frying pan on medium-high heat. Add onion and garlic, and cook for 2-3 mins until softened. While onion cooks, remove core and seeds of capsicum and thinly slice.

3. Add capsicum and mushroom to pan with onion and cook for 2-3 minutes, until just tender. While capsicum and mushrooms cook, whisk egg in a small bowl. Add cream, salt, and first measure of cheese then mix to combine. Set aside.

4. Add ham and courgette to pan with mushrooms and cook for 1-2 minutes, until warmed through . Reduce pan heat to low-medium.

5. Add 1/2 of the reserved pasta water and cooked, drained pasta to pan and stir to coat. Add egg/cream mixture and mix well to combine. If you would like more sauce, stir through more pasta water. Allow sauce to gently heat through for about 1 minute - don't overcook or egg will go lumpy. Season with salt and a generous amount of black pepper.

To serve: divide creamy carbonara between plates and sprinkle over remaining cheese.

Personally I leave out the mushroom (no one in our house likes it) then cover in tomato sauce (kind of like ketchup). Probably some sort of crime to do this though.