For the scallops I made a sort of mushy pea puree. Enough peas for a good portion each were cooked for a couple of minutes in boiling salted water with a good handful of chopped mint thrown in as well. Once cooked they were drained, roughly crushed with a potato masher, seasoned and liberally dosed with loads of good olive oil to loosen them up. The scallops were pan fried in butter for just 30 seconds either side.
I served these with a sauce made from a white wine, shallot and lemon reduction with the scallop roes chopped and added at the last minute. Seemed to work well.
I've had many a cabonara over the years and, in this country, we seem obsessed with adding cream or some other non-eggy dairy product to make the sauce. Here's how to make a reasonably genuine version from a recipe shown to me by an actual Italian!
Whilst the spaghetti was on the go in a nice big pan I gently fried about 100g of diced pancetta with a couple of whole peeled garlic cloves in 50g of butter for about five minutes; until the pancetta was starting to crisp up. I then removed the garlic as it had done its job by infusing the buttery pancetta with loads of flavour. In then went the cooked pasta with a little of the cooking water. I did this by transferring the spaghetti with a pair of tongs as I wanted to save the water in case needed to loosen the sauce.
In a bowl I had beaten three eggs and added 50g each of finely grated parmesan and pecorino cheese. I seasoned with black pepper only as the cheese mix was salty enough already. This cheesy mixture was added to the pasta/pancetta and the whole lot stirred through to coat all of the spaghetti with the sauce. I added some of the water from the spaghetti pan a little at a time to make sure the carbonara retained its saucy consistency.
Served with a little more of the grated cheese mixture for sprinkling at the table.
Semplice!
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