Carbonara spaghetti

For the evening, I endeavored to try making carbonara spaghetti for 6 (dad, mum, nephew, sis and bro-in-law) using an ingredient meant for 3!... Letme explain.

I started off with a gift from sis, a can of Prego Carbonara sauce with the recommended serving for 3. Guessing that the contents will be quite salty, I improvised like Iron Chef (i can hear your thought bubble "OH Puhleeezzz")... opppsss. I mean experimented.

Ingredients:
1 can Prego Carbonara sauce (Campbell's)
2 eggs
1 cup milk
1/2 cup cream cheese
enough spaghetti for servings of 6
2 slices ham coursely sliced (not bacon. bought wrongly)
5 cloves garlic (chopped up)
6 button mushrooms (sliced)
1 stalk of coriander leaves finely chopped (should be parsley)
pepper and Formaggio cheese to taste
olive oil

Started off by doing all the normal things. Cooking the spaghetti to al dante and dishing it up and added olive oil to prevent sticking.

Boiled the milk in a small pot to reduce it to about 80% then, turned off the heat to add cream cheese and egg white from 2 eggs, and stir until it was well mixed up. Supposingly, the egg white won't be too cooked but I added when it was still hot, and it didn't turn out quite smooth.

Having made that blunder, left that aside, and continued to fry the garlics and mushrooms until a little golden in a wok. Then, the ham into the wok, until it's a little golden as well.

Then, went in the opened can of Prego sauce (tasted it a little and quite salty) into the wok and mix it up a little over low heat. Then, turned the fire off before it starts to bubble.

Then, to salvage my blunder, I sieved the contents of the pot into the wok, and discarded what must be the over-cooked egg whites. Then, turned back up the fire to low heat, and threw the spaghetti, 2 egg yolks and coriander (couldn't find parsley in market, and thought this is almost similar) in to mix well. Formaggio cheese and pepper to taste, depending on individual.

Result... YUMMY.. and I'm not boasting. Good testimonials from everyone. heheh... apparently, I had successfully neutralised much of the saltiness from Prego sauce.

Reflecting back, I think I could have done better with a cup of cooking cream and half cup of Parmesan cheese to add up to the sauce, instead of the milk, cream cheese and eggs.

The salad didn't turn out that well.... 1 lettuce, 1 stalk 'yau mak', 2 tomato, a small bowl of mint leaves, and an orange for the juice. The orange didn't give enough ooomphh...

Ended the dinner with a HUGE juicy watermelon. It cost only RM9 for a 9kg++ jumbo sized 92% H2O container! Sweet, thirst quenching dessert to end an evening. FYI.... my palm is pretty big.

Signing off.... [burp]....