This really quick, easy and delicious creamy pasta dish features zucchini noodles, with egg yolks to add top-quality protein and thicken up the sauce.
The more herbs you add, the better. A note about the egg yolks: Be careful not to let them cook for too long, otherwise you’ll end up with scrambled egg carbonara—not ideal!
Prep & Cook Time: 30 minutes
Serves: 4
Ingredients
For the zucchetti
- 4 zucchinis
- 2 tbsp olive oil
For the carbonara sauce
- 2 tbsp olive oil
- 2 onions, finely diced
- 3 cloves garlic, finely diced
- ½ cup grated cheese
- 1 punnet (250 g) mushrooms, sliced
- 1 cup cream
- ¼ cup vegetable stock
- 2 egg yolks
- small bunch of chives, parsley or tarragon, roughly chopped
To serve
- Parmesan shavings
- extra virgin olive oil
Method
- Cut the zucchini with a vegetable peeler or with a spiraliser into noodles. Set aside.
- Start making the sauce. Heat the olive oil in a large frying pan over a medium heat, add the onion with a generous pinch of salt and cook, stirring often, for 2–3 minutes until starting to soften but not colour. Add the garlic and mushrooms, and continue to cook for about 3 minutes until everything has softened. Stir in the cream, stock and grated cheese. Turn the heat down to low.
- Grab another medium to large frying pan (or a large saucepan), place it over a high heat and quickly fry the zucchetti in the olive oil for 1 minute. Set aside in the pan to keep warm.
- Bring the sauce just up to the boil, stirring constantly to ensure that the cheese has melted, then remove from the heat and immediately stir through the egg yolks. Continue stirring continuously until the yolks are thoroughly mixed through the sauce. Season to taste with salt and freshly ground black pepper and stir through the chopped herbs.
- To serve, arrange a small mound of zucchetti in wide serving bowls. Spoon over the carbonara sauce, then top with Parmesan shavings, a drizzle of extra virgin olive oil and some cracked black pepper.
Extracted from What the Fat? Recipes by Grant Schofield, Caryn Zinn and Craig Rodger, $35.00, © The Real Food Publishing Company, 2019. Images copyright © Todd Eyre Photography, 2019. Out now.
