Wednesday 9th July - experimental cookery

 I've been trying out some recipes;

Spaghetti Carbonara

I had bever actually made spaghetti carbonate before, although I'd eaten it often enough. I read through a couple of recipes online, and settled on 'Easy Spaghetti Carbonara' from the BBC Good Food site. There is an Ultimate Spaghetti Carbonara recas well, which is  Nigella Lawson version, almost the same but using 3 pans instead of 2...

Basically, for 2, you boil 200g spaghetti. While that's going on, fry 75g lardonds in a little olive oil. grate 100g parmesan and stir this into 2 beaten eggs. Season the egg and cheese mix with pepper and a little salt. Dip a bit of water out of the spaghetti  pan with a mug in case you need it later. Drain the spaghetti, but not too thoroughly so that a little water clings to the strands, and tip it into the pan with the crispy brown lardons, and straight away stir through the egg and cheese mixture, off the heat. Add a little pasta water to loosen the sauce if necessary. 

Serve in warm bowls with extra grated parmesan. 

It was delicious! My only problem was that I was using up some rather old parmesan which was too hard to grate. I ended up chopping it finely with knife  - time consuming and messy. 

This recipe is keeper

...

4-Ingredient Impossible Pie

I was intrigued by this recipe and thought I'd give it a go. I made half of these quantities and cooked it in a dish in the air fryer. 

Ingredients

• 4 large eggs
• 3/4 cup (148 g) granulated white sugar
• 1/2 cup (64 g) all-purpose flour
• 2 cups (473 ml) low fat milk

Instructions

• Preheat oven to 350°F (177°C). Grease the interior of a 9-inch pie pan.
• Add eggs, sugar, flour and milk into a blender. Blend until all ingredients are incorporated and evenly mixed. Pour batter into prepared pie pan.
• Bake for about 45 minutes or until toothpick inserted comes out clean. The pie will also start to pull away from the sides. Let pie cool to room temperature. The pie will deflate a little as it cools. Place pie into fridge for several hours or overnight to chill and to let the flavors fully develop. If desired, dust pie with powdered sugar before serving. Pie is best served chilled.

The website suggests using vanilla flavour coconut milk, but I used ordinary dairy milk and vanilla sugar.

What you end up with is very similar to the custard part of a custard tart. I found the pie too sweet; next time around I'll use a lot less sugar and add nutmeg. BB didn't care for it, but then he's never liked custard tarts, but I love them! 

Music

More manic music to accompany the tennis. The Flight of the Bumble Bee played on the piano by Yuja Wang... un be lieve a ble