Been gone, but I'm back in the kitchen!

Today was another great Saturday in the kitchen.  Maybe you noticed, maybe you didn't, but there was no entry about it last week.  In fact, there has been nothing for a while.  I have been in Needles California for work.  Never heard of it? Not surprising.  It is a small town in the middle of the Mohave Desert where California, Arizona and Nevada meet.  There will most likely be a post about that at some later date. 

Back to the kitchen!  Today I made Chicken Carbonara.  The recipe I used came from HERE; however, when I cook I rarely follow the recipe the whole way through.  Rather than using pancetta- which is impossible to be found in Delta's woefully inadequate excuses for grocery stores- I used fresh side pork which I cooked up in advance and seasoned with salt and pepper.  Then I began the recipe and used the pre-cooked side pork where it says to use the pancetta.  I started the pasta, mixed the sauce ingredients together using dried herbs rather than fresh- it works but I have no idea how much I used, just eyeball it. About this time I also began browning diced chicken.  Rather than adding shredded chicken to the pancetta and garlic, I added the sauce mixture and allowed it to cook into the sauce I wanted and then added it to the browned chicken.  Once the pasta was cooked, I added it to everything else and it was done!  Goes great with peas.  All in all very small changes.  My family had this for dinner and mom and dad loved it! 

Note:  Where the recipe says to avoid boiling the sauce as it may cause the egg yolks to turn into scrambled eggs, it will.  Luckily, this doesn't mess with the flavor, but it gives your sauce a funny texture.

Before making the main course, I noticed that it calls for 8 egg yolks.  That leaves you with the whites of 8 eggs!  What can you do with that?!  Dessert of course.  The dessert was a baked meringue with roasted berries on top.  It worked out amazing, in spite of some small errors.  First, we didn't have any raspberries.  This means I was a pint short on the berries.  This means a shorter cooking time.  I forgot that part.  Roasting berries though...they still taste good if they're a little over-done.  The pan on the other hand?  That took some scrubbing.  Then, as I was folding the last of the sugar into the meringue, I was a bit too rough on it and the meringue lost some of its stiffness.  Neither of these mistakes seem to have changed the outcome of the recipe and it tastes great! 

Today was a great success in the kitchen.  If anybody is bored with eating the same old things or doesn't know what to make, give this a try.  It takes some work, but I promise you'll enjoy the fruits of your labor!