That simple carbonara

Surely with all the photos of food you've seen on Instagram (assuming you have one) you'd probably say, "not another food post!" on this one. But wait, hear me out. I don't always post photos of food on my blog. I don't take photos of every great dish I eat. I tweet it maybe, but not always with a photo. I'm posting a photo of this dish because it blew me away. Never thought a dish made in 15 minutes at home would taste so much better than the expensive ones restaurants serve.

Carbonara Pasta

I've been following Erwan's blog for quite some time because it's one of the great, no-nonsense blogs on the internet these days. Erwan prepares delicious and healthy meals and he posts videos of how he prepares them for the benefit of his readers. But even though I drool over the delicious meals he prepares, I never really tried to do any one of the dishes he did. Until today.

I tried preparing Erwan's simple carbonara recipe and I think I was able to do it very well. It's unbelievably simple and it's very delicious. Eggs, cheese, olive oil, a slice of turkey and bacon. It's the perfect dinner for tonight, and the perfect dish to serve my guests tomorrow for lunch.

I thought why put the recipe here when you can just go directly to the source. There are a lot of great recipes there. Enjoy!

Meal after New Year's

The problem most of us have after every holiday is the amount of food we have left. Some of us opt to throw them so we don't have to wait 'til they get spoiled. Some of us prefer to give them to those who need to eat. Some of us (like my partner and I) prefer to recycle whatever that we can to create new dishes. Good thing was we had a lot of cheese, pita, honey and pasta left.

Mike did all of these in less than an hour. And yes, they're really good. Especially the dips--they're mouth-watering!

Rigatoni with grilled salmon, eggplant and plum tomatoes

Mike also made some dips for the leftover pita bread 

(Tomato and jalapeno dip, honey mayo and cheese dip)

A relationship with pasta

I am in love with pasta. It is one of the things that can cheer me up on any given day, be it penne, fusilli, linguine, or fettuccine (you don't expect me to name all types of pasta, do you?). I'd rather eat pasta than rice, to be honest. In fact, pasta is the first thing I look for on any restaurant menu. The more unique the pasta, the better; especially those with vegetables, magnifique! Le poulet comes second.

I've tried cooking a couple of pasta dishes myself. Whenever I like a particular dish from a restaurant I've visited, my brain automatically tries to identify the ingredients needed to recreate it. And recreate dishes I have! Although not as good as the original restaurant recipe, of course. Dishes like Cibo's penne al telefono and Mary Grace's creamy salmon pasta I have recreated so many times.

 Cibo's Penne al Telefono  image source

Mary Grace's Creamy Salmon Pasta

Then there are days when my recreations or experiments would fail me. There was a time when I have attempted to include cream dory and It didn't fit in with the rest of the dish. It broke my heart to waste such a beautiful and delicious fish.

But when I am in doubt, there are a few ingredients that I always use to create a really good meal and these are: basil, garlic, olives, and bell peppers. A new favorite of mine is the eggplant, a revelation, really.

I think I've made it clear how much I love pasta. J'adore les pates! I leave you now with a photo of a lovely pasta I had for lunch (courtesy of Mike). Not sure what it's called, but it's basically made up of my favorite ingredients sans olives and bell peppers. But it's really good, light and delicious.