{As I finish up my yoga teacher training I have a few fabulous blogger friends contributing guest posts over the next month!}
Today we have a guest post from the lovely Erin, who is the mastermind behind House of Earnest! Erin and I met last spring at GBS2014 and immediately connected over ten bajillion things — so I am THRILLED to have her sharing here on TKP! Please check out House of Earnest for some beautiful DIY projects, home and style ideas, and delicious recipes! ALSO check out Erin's AMAZING product line at Grandiflora! This lady is talented — seriously. THANK YOU ERIN! xoxo
Hi Kitchen Paper readers! I am so thankful that Mary asked me to post today! My name is Erin and my favorite food is cheese. Yes, all the cheese. {Mary note: This is reason 20,482 why I LOVE ERIN!} Today, we’re going to be discussing one of my favorite vehicles for cheese… Pasta carbonara.
The carbonara that I had from childhood through my teenage years barely resembled the actual Roman classic. Back then, I thought that it was a totally made up American dish which tasted like sticky white cream on pasta. Thus, I basically ignored it’s existence until one fateful date in my late twenties when I went to Italy and discovered the real carbonara. I tried to understand what was involved in the dish through the broken english of our waiter and as soon as I got home I went to work trying to replicate it. One thing that totally stuck with me, however, was that the dish I had in Italy had no cream in it at all. The creaminess was created using pasta water, egg yolk, and parmesan. This was a total eureka moment when I realized why I didn’t like the American-style carbonaras. Since then, pasta carbonara is one of my cooking stapes and is made at least weekly in my house.
When I changed my eating habits to be mostly paleo last year I bought a veggie spiralizer and duplicated some of my favorite recipes with it. One of my first goals was to create a carbonara using the spiral cut zucchini. While cheese isn’t usually considered paleo, I eat it because it’s my favorite. Hard, aged cheeses (like parmesan) are also much easier on the stomach than their soft, baby friends (like brie).
So while zucchini carbonara is most definitely not authentic, I love the zucchini as a vehicle for the creamy sauce and blistered pancetta. I added roasted cherry tomatoes to this recipe as well to give it more flavor dimension!
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Zucchini Noodle Carbonara
Ingredients
- 2 medium zucchini squash
- 1 and ½ tablespoons olive oil, divided
- ½ cup cubed pancetta
- 2 cloves garlic, finely minced/crushed
- ⅛ tsp red pepper flakes (less if you don’t want it spicy)
- ½ cup dry white wine
- 1 egg yolk
- ⅓ cup grated fresh parmesan cheese
- 1 cup halved cherry tomatoes
- Salt & Pepper
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Arrange halved cherry tomatoes on a sheet pan and drizzle with ½ tablespoon olive oil and sprinkle with salt and pepper. Roast for 12-14 minutes until blistered and slightly charred.
- Meanwhile, heat garlic and red pepper flakes in 1 tablespoon olive oil in a skillet over medium heat just until fragrant, 1 minute. Add pancetta and cook until browned, 5 minutes. Add the wine to the pan to deglaze and scrape up any browned bits of pancetta. Let this mixture simmer for about 5 minutes until alcohol cooks out of the wine. Add the spiral cut zucchini to the pan and stir to coat in the wine sauce. Let this mixture cook for about 8-10 minutes, stirring every few minutes, until the zucchini is al dente. Remove from heat and let cool slightly before adding in the egg yolk and the parmesan. Toss in the roasted tomatoes and top with more cheese.
- If you’d like to make it WITH pasta, remove the mixture from heat after the alcohol cooks out and add in cooked pasta along with about ½ cup of the pasta water. Then add the egg and parmesan.
I hope you like this simple spin on carbonara! Enjoy!
HUGE thanks to Erin for this post! Please go give her some love on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and House of Earnest!
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