Bacon and Mushroom Pappardelle

If you're a fan of carbonara pasta then this is the recipe for you. It's ridiculously easy to prepare and even easier to wolf down. Sure it's not the healthiest of pasta meals, using cream, bacon and plenty of carb loading pasta, but it's jam packed with flavour and also, in this case packed with vegetables. The cream works out to be only 1/4 of a cup per person, that's nothing! And as for the bacon, you'd probably eat more in your Sunday morning fry up. 
So when you think about it - it's actually really healthy. 
Honest. 

Ingredients (serves 4):

• 200 grams lean free range bacon, diced
• 400 grams button mushrooms, thickly sliced
• 4 cloves of garlic, crushed
• 2 egg yolks, lightly beaten
• 1 cup of cream
• 2 spring onion, thickly sliced
• 1/2 cup of parsley, finely chopped
• 1/4 cup grated parmesan 
• 400 grams of pappardelle pasta (spaghetti or fettucine would also be suitable) 
• 1 cup of frozen peas
• olive oil for cooking

Prepare your vegetables first, as the rest of the meal doesn't take long to cook and assemble. 

Put a good lug of olive oil in a large frying pan, and cook the bacon for 5-8 minutes, stirring on a medium heat till lightly browned. Remove from the fry pan and set aside. 

In the same pan, add another generous lug of olive oil and cook the mushrooms, stirring for 5 minutes, till they are softened and starting to shrink down. The juice from the mushrooms will help you to get any sticky bacon bits from the bottom of the pan. Next add the garlic and at least a teaspoon of cracked pepper and cook for another 2 minutes. Set aside with the bacon. Do not rinse the pan - we'll use it again later. 

Meanwhile boil your pasta in a large pot of heavily salted water - I usually add at least 1 tbsp of salt to the cooking water. For the last four minutes of cooking, add the frozen peas. Before you drain the water, scoop half a cup of the cooking liquid into the fry pan which you cooked the bacon and mushroom. Drain the pasta and peas, then pop them into the frying pan. 

Turn the frying pan onto a medium heat and add the bacon and mushrooms along with the spring onion, cream and beaten egg yolks. Work quickly to toss everything together. After a couple of minutes you'll see it start to thicken. Now remove from the heat and stir through the parsley and parmesan cheese. 

Use tongs to ladle the pasta into serving bowls. Sprinkle with extra parsley and parmesan if desired.