No cream added?

Eric and I were somewhere....watching Food Network and we saw Ann Burrell making pasta carbonara.  To be honest, she's far from being our favorite chef on FN but we had a lack of things to watch and she was making pasta, which we love.  This recipe looked so simple and easy to make we said that someday we'd make but with all the out of town action, pasta just wasn't on the menu for calorie count, especially this one.

I always thought carbonara was cream based due to the cheese sauce but it turns out, there is no cream at all.  The process went like this:

spaghetti

pancetta

eggs

parmesan

pecorino

To start, I chopped the pancetta into cubes and then cooked it until crispy. It was then removed from the pan while the noodles cooked.  I left the fat in the pan.  While the noodles were cooking, I whisked the eggs with the 2 cheeses together.

Once the noodles were done, I turned on the heat for the pancetta drippings.  Once hot, the noodles were added to the pan along with the pancetta and tossed.  Then the egg mixture was added to the noodles.  Once the eggs were added, the stirring was immediate and continuous so the eggs didn't curdle but instead turned into a creamy sauce.

To serve with the pasta, I also made some simple salmon.  I wanted it to cut the heaviness of the pasta so I kept it simple.  For the salmon I used:

salmon

fresh dill

salt

lemon

butter

I cut the lemon into slices and placed half of them underneath the salmon.  Then, I sprinkled a little salt on it and placed till on top with more lemon slices and butter.  I wrapped the salmon up in foil and put it in the oven until done.

I removed the lemon slices and the dill from the salmon before serving.  I wish I had included some scallions or something green just to add color to the dish but I knew we would just pick it off which is why I chose not to. 

The pasta was delicious! I think using whole wheat pasta added a good nuttiness to the sauce.  The sauce was very cheese and the pancetta added a great amount of saltiness.  The best thing about the salmon is that since the flavors were more tart, it definitely cut some of the richness of the pasta so when eaten together they were a perfect mix.  This entire meal made for great leftovers the next day.  They were even good cold since I apparently couldn't wait to put it in the microwave before eating.