Cooking With Matt

Here’s a really quick and simple recipe for those evenings when you get home from work and want something really nice, really quickly. The other great thing about this recipe is that you can freeze the leftovers for another night.

The ingredients you’ll need are;

• Fettucini (fresh is best, but packet is ok)
• Prosciutto (approx. 5-6 slices)
• 2 shallots / spring onions
• 1-2 cloves of garlic
• Thickened Cream
• 1 Egg (yolk only)
• Parmesan Cheese

Cook the Fettucini as per the packet instructions.

Slice the Prosciutto up in to strips about 1 cm thick, saute them in a frying pan or pot with some butter or olive oil for a couple of minutes. Add in the chopped shallots, and crushed garlic, cook for a couple of minutes more.

Remove your pan from the heat, combine the cream and egg yolk, and then add that to the pan all over the bacon, shallot and garlic mix.

Return to the pan to the heat, add salt and pepper to taste, stir in a handful of grated Parmesan Cheese to thicken the sauce a little.

By now your Fettucini should be about ready, once it is drain off the water and serve on a plate or bowl. Pour the Carbonara sauce over the top, add on a little more Parmesan Cheese to finish it off.

And if there are any cooking related companies reading this I’d really love a new stove / oven…. *cough* sponsor me *cough*

Enjoy!

It’s been a while since I’ve done much in the way of cooking around home, mostly because I’ve been on Lite n Easy, so on the weekend I decided that I really really needed something so tasty for breakfast and Eggs Benedict won!

I love Eggs Benedict, it’s one of my all time favourite breakfasts, but I’m not so much into smoked salmon and I find that sometimes ham is a little heavy on it along with the eggs and hollandaise sauce so about a year ago I started putting Prosciutto on them….what a difference it makes.

• Eggs (1-2 per person)
• Prosciutto (1-2 slices per person)
• Bread stick or English muffins
• White Vinegar
• Hollandaise Sauce (I prefer MasterFoods)

Now some people my give me grief about the MasterFoods sauce, and yeh normally I’d make my own sauces for whatever I’m cooking, but it’s Sunday morning so relax and let someone else do the hard part.

Slice your bread up, and get it it ready for toasting under the grill.

Here’s the actual secret behind my Eggs Benedict, my Nickelodeon glass with Spongebob, Jimmy Neutron and Angelica from Rugrats on it.

Crack an egg into a glass, it’s a lot easier to pour the egg into the simmering water and to get it to stay in one piece this way.

Put some water into a good sized pot, add a dash of salt. Once it’s just starting to boil reduce the heat and put in a good slurp of the White Vinegar (this helps the egg to bind and stay in one piece).

Give the water a really good stir in a circular motion, we’re looking to create a whirlpool in the centre.

Once you’ve got a good whirlpool going pour the eggs in and they should spin around and around binding themselves up into a nice ball.

The eggs should only take a minute and a half, you’ll know they are done as the yolk will actually start to float suspended above the bottom of the pot.

Take the eggs out with a big spoon or ladle, and put them on some absorbent paper to get rid of the excess water. Your toasted bread is probably about ready now as well.

Heat up the Hollandaise Sauce now, from memory it’s around 40 seconds.

Start to assemble your plate. I like a little bit of Baby Spinach and Rocquette on mine, so I normally will put them on first before the Prosciutto.

Add the Prosciutto, wrap it over itself so that it makes a nice shape to hold the eggs on. Dont worry about heating or cooking the Prosciutto, it will get enough heat from the toast as well as the Hollandaise Sauce.

After the eggs have been added, pour a load of the Hollandaise Sauce on.

All that’s left to do now is eat!

Enjoy!