Everything bad about living alone comes to a head when you are sick. Suddenly the glorious abundance of me-time is not having anyone to fix you a nice simmering pot of porridge with ginger, the freedom to throw my things around and have my place as messy and homey as I like it is helplessly watching the washing pile up and the stains accumulate as I stumble about sleepily, and everything comes to a magnificent standstill in my Sudafed-induced coma. I don’t often feel this, but this morning it hit me anew, this thirsting to have someone else around.

But amid the throb throb throb in my head I’m thankful to have colleagues and a manager who order me to get out and go home when it’s good for me, and who tell me that I should just take Monday off if I’m still ill all weekend and let Monday be my weekend instead. A 12-hour sleep last night and good spell of fresh air this afternoon have put me almost right again; I’ve even regained enough of an appetite to want to bake up another batch of the best peanut butter cookies in the world and hoard them all for myself this time round (having expended a great deal of time and effort baking a birthday cake I don’t even like for colleagues last week; I was told it was delish, but it tasted of walnutty coffee to me, and all I could think of while eating it was dangit why ruin perfectly good coffee cake with walnuts? more importantly, why had this horror been perpetrated at my hands in my very own kitchen? oh the things i do to please the crowd)

Before I go off on another tangent and sound like I bake all the time (I really don’t. I just write about it because it’s the most interesting thing I do which isn’t work, sleep, and watching old anime) – work is really picking up, and I find myself now at the unwelcome yet not wholly dissatisfying point of having so much to accomplish I am unable to keep it all in my head and have to keep very detailed little notes and reminders in Outlook. There is a funny little joy to signing your name to an official letter, to having something you wrote approved, and the perverse writerly part of me thinks I will always enjoy this aspect of marketing most – writing the copy, writing things to be printed, creating the bit of text that will sell the show – it’s silly, I know, but I feel I will never get tired of it, not in the way that I can imagine getting tired of many other things.

But fortunately for all parties concerned, I am too tired to properly wax lyrical about my work right now – so medicine, and bed. (Maybe cookies first.)

Flu sounds so trivial, but when you have it full-blown it is the worst feeling ever. I spent the entirety of this morning and afternoon in bed (waking up briefly to have a bowl of soup for lunch, use up all my tissue and Lemsip, and then go back to bed). It was pretty surreal. I wonder where the day has gone, and I am suffering mild panic from having only done one (ONE) job application the whole week because I have been ill/lazy/unable to find a lot of jobs to apply for in the first place.

It was a rare low point for me today… I like to think I’m pretty upbeat, and I don’t often get despairing sorry-for-myself feelings of being a failure and wanting to throw in the towel, but today they briefly hit. I don’t really know why. It was probably a combination of having been idle almost the whole week, feeling physically dreadful, and not having much to look forward to jobwise.

In the spirit of thankfulness, however (inspired by Steffy’s blog), yesterday I had a very enjoyable dinner at Tokyo Diner with the unlikeliest bunch of old acquaintances :) and I’m looking forward to next week – long, long overdue night out with ex-colleagues Hannah and Vanessa, some front of house volunteering, meeting up with Eunice, dinner with Charmain, and Oxford over the weekend! Excited.

And now, carbonara recipe time!

I wanted to post this anyway because it was so fantastic, but I’m glad there is popular demand for it. As a bit of background: authentic Italian carbonara does not contain cream. I’m not even sure if it contains egg whites. I suspect it doesn’t, and it’s only meant to be cooked with egg yolk – which is why I avoided it for such a long time (I don’t like separating eggs, I always end up throwing out the unused half cos I don’t know what to do with it). But the other day I came across this recipe which didn’t involve separating eggs, and I tried it out immediately.

As I never measure anything, these proportions are taken from the link above:

600 grams spaghetti or bucatini
120 grams guanciale or pancetta — diced or cut into strips
1 clove garlic
2 medium eggs (very fresh)
100 grams mixed Parmesan and pecorino Romano (or all pecorino) – grated
olive oil
salt and pepper

1. Boil your pasta till al dente. Drain. Save some of the pasta water.
2. While the pasta is boiling, beat eggs in a bowl with a pinch of salt and some cheese.
3. Peel your garlic clove and fry it with the guanciale or pancetta in a pan till the meat is on the verge of becoming crispy. You don’t have to add oil to the pan if there is enough fat on your meat. I never do.
4. Add the drained pasta to the pan and toss with the guanciale/pancetta.
5. Lower heat to minimum. Add the egg mixture and toss well. Be VERY careful not to let the egg set or cook because you will have scrambled egg with pasta if you do so. If it looks too dry, thin it with pasta water.
6. Remove from heat and add the rest of the cheese plus salt and black pepper to taste. Serve immediately.

Some notes

My proportions were all out of whack, but essentially they were: 2 servings of pasta, 205g pancetta (which was too much, but that was the amount my pack contained and I didn’t want to have like 2 tablespoonfuls of pancetta sitting in my fridge), 3 medium eggs, and a lot of cheese. I like cheese.

I didn’t have pecorino Romano, so I only used Parmesan. I think it makes a difference, so the next time I will try it with both cheeses. Also I had run out of garlic, so I skipped that. It turned out fine, though I adore garlic and I’m sure it would’ve been better with.

For extra droolsome flavour, turn down the heat before you add the pasta to the pan, and throw in a generous splash of white wine while your guanciale/pancetta is still sizzling. Let this reduce till you get a delicious syrupy winey liquid, then add the pasta. I didn’t do this in this recipe because I had no wine in the house (sob), and it is probably grossly inauthentic anyway, but I usually do it when I make carbonara and the wine imparts a terrific kick. I’m not enough of a gastronome to properly put it into words, so all i can say is it tastes really good.

This recipe does not reheat well. Obvious on hindsight, but I’m not the brightest bulb in the box, so I reheated it the next day and wound up with exactly what you’re not supposed to (scrambled egg pasta).

The bottom line… carbonara typically feels too heavy and sickening after a while because of the addition of cream (an American adulteration). The egg way produces a much lighter, more palatable dish. And it was really the best carbonara I’ve ever had, ever. I tend to serially order carbonara at Italian restaurants because it is by far my favourite pasta, and I’ve had a lot of carbonara, but I feel like I can’t have it with cream any more after trying this.

Let me know how you get on with it if you try it out!