The Husband and I went to a restaurant in Rome where we had a carbonara-y thing made with roast boar and peas, so I quite often make carbonara with frozen peas now to go some way to alleviating the guilt that I feel from eating a meal made up of 98% pasta with a squidge of protein and fat. And it's authentic-ish.

Pancetta or smoked bacon, about 150g. Or half a packet of the pancetta I buy.
Couple of eggs.
Some parmesan. About 100g, or as much as you like.
A slug of white wine if there's any in the fridge.
And a slug of cream if you've any knocking about.
Pasta of some description, however much you need for however many you are. These amounts of bacon etc would feed 3-4.
Frozen peas, a handful thereof.

Boil the kettle for your pasta, meanwhile grate your parmesan into a jug, crack in your eggs (and fling in your cream if you have any). Put in the pasta. You now have 8-12 mins to get everything else together. Easy.

Cook off your chopped pancetta or bacon in a deep frying pan until it picks up quite a bit of colour. Once it is nice and caramelly, chuck in your wine if you have it so that the alcohol boils off. The peas do in now as well, they only take a couple of minutes.

Your pasta should be ready, hopefully, so you can drain it quickly and put into the frying pan. I tend to keep back a bit of the pasta water in case the sauce needs a bit of loosening. Then put in the cheese and egg mixture, stirring it well. The heat of the pasta cooks the egg in the sauce, but as it happens I always use very fresh lion-marked eggs so I reckon we're alright. If it gets a bit tight just throw in a couple of spoonfuls of pasta water.

Anyway, we like this a lot and as long as we stick to penne or fusilli rather than the more traditional spaghetti then Babybear can eat it until the cows (or indeed boar) come home.

This recipe has reminded me of the fact that when I was at university I thought it was genuinely witty that we had a sign above the toaster in our student flat that bore the legend 'Make Toast, Not War'... <Aitch wipes tears of  thirtysomething mirth from eyes>.


"Thought you might like this uber easy recipe (using the word loosely!). It requires no doughmaking, ideal for lazy types like me. This is how we used to make pizza at uni when we'd spent all our food money on beer ;-)

Probably noooot really called Andrew, in fact, but this email wasn't signed so Andrew is the only nominative detail I can glean from our correspondence. For the record, I think that if you want to make your own buttermilk you just mix equal amounts of natural yoghurt and semi-skimmed milk. I think...





Says 'Andrew':

"I reckon you could swop carrot for courgette, pepper, onion, etc, though probably fry them a bit first.

Also use any different cheese and herbs, and I'm sure normal milk would work, if you can't get buttermilk.



1 carrot, grated
15 stalks parsley, chopped
60g cheddar, grated
220g self-raising flour
1 egg
3/4 cup buttermilk (about 150ml, I think?)
1/2 cup vegetable oil


1. Preheat oven to 180c.
2. Mix carrot, parsley, cheese and flour.
3. In another bowl, whisk egg, buttermilk and oil.
4. Add this to dry ingredients and mix.
5. Spoon into muffin cases (makes 12) and bake for 20-25 mins."

Short and sweet, just how we like a recipe.


2 eggs, 125g plain flour, 150ml milk mixed with 150ml water, 1 level tbsp wholegrain mustard (optional, I haven't actually tried this with notsotall, but I can't think why she wouldn't like it), good grinding of black pepper, all mixed up together and left to stand for 15 mins.

Nice drop of lard/dripping in the pudding tin(s), and 20-25mins at 220C. This makes them really quite crispy on the bottom.