Sundried Tomato Cream Sauce

Summer, at least in relation to school, is coming to an end.  Tomorrow my daughter has her orientation for high school tomorrow and my son has his meet and greet at the middle school.  So we’ve had fun the past couple of days playing games and letting them be lazy.  Because after today we are off and running with a new year. And back to doing the school lunches.  Though with the days starting earlier as they move up schools I’ll have to do them in the evenings but that’s ok.  I’ll survive.  🙂

I’m just thrilled they are still into board games and such.  I hope they don’t outgrow that.  We have so much fun with family time.

Given that all that went on last week, quick meals were the thing.  This dish couldn’t be simpler.  But it has a lot of flavours and falls into the comfort food category.

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It’s hard to go wrong when you have sundried tomatoes and garlic.  We also had on hand some apple smoked chicken sausages.  These are fully cooked so this was added at the end.  If you start with raw sausages, brown them first and set aside to cook off near the end.  In a skillet melt 2 tablespoons of butter and add a few cloves of garlic that have been chopped.  Also, add several chopped sundried tomatoes.

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Chop up a few mushrooms and slice the sausages and add that to the skillet.  One of the towns we went on our honeymoon was San Gimignano which is famous for the towers.  It also has very good white wine.  I wanted to use this for the sauce.

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Add about 1/2 a cup of a good white wine to the skillet. Bring to a simmer.

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While this is cooking prepare the spaghetti.  Near the end of cooking add 1/2 a cup of cream and 1/2 a cup of freshly grated parmesan cheese.  Mix well.

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Add the spaghetti and a handful of fresh basil.  Toss well and serve.

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Quick and easy comfort food.  When it’s a tough week, it’s perfect.  In fact I did a similar dish at the end with tomatoes from our garden.  Seems to be my go to flavour profile!

Carbonara Sauce

I know it’s hard to tell we really love Italian food.  🙂  But we cook it often.  So I thought it was time for carbonara sauce.  We had leftover pancetta and we couldn’t let it go to waste!  Once more I used Marcella Hazan’s book “Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking” for the recipe.  This is the book I got the inspiration to make the cream and butter sauce.

To start I prepare the pasta using this recipe. I’ll admit I don’t like to make the spaghetti bit as the strands are so small they become annoying to handle but for this recipe you need it.

As we only had a bit of pancetta left I also used a few rashers of streaky bacon.  I chopped that up and started sauteing in a skillet.

While that was cooking I beat two eggs in a bowl and added about 1/4 cup of romano cheese and 1/2 a cup of parmesan cheese to the egg.  Then added a bit of salt and pepper and mixed everything together.

Next I added some olive oil and 4 garlic cloves minced to the skillet.  This is sauteed on medium heat.

Seriously wish I still had my sense of smell.  Bacon and garlic are made for each other.  As this was cooking I added 1/4 cup of Chablis to the mixture. At this point I brought the hot water back up to a boil and added the pasta to cook.  Because these are thin strands of pasta this will cook quickly!  Just a couple of minutes.

Once cooked I drained the pasta and tossed it in with the bacon mixture.  Then I added the egg mixture.

It’s important to toss and serve immediately.

The recipe does call for 2 T of chopped parsley but we didn’t have any.  My husband made wonderful cheesy garlic bread to go with this as well.