Sweet Pea Penne Carbonara: Spilled Milk #94

Sometimes it pays to ask, "Why not?"

So a few weeks ago I was making my sweet pea risotto for dinner and thought, what about a sweet pea carbonara? There are lots of fun ways to flavor a traditional carbonara. Bittman, the NYT and Food & Wine magazine all have various versions of spinach carbonara, and a few small websites have pea carbonara, mostly just whole peas in a more traditional carbonara.

I also had a picky eater in my home who didn’t want me to use guanciale (cured pork jowl), without which is a carbonara really a carbonara??? But since I was adding pea purée to begin with, I thought, “Why not?” Next time, I am adding my crisped guanciale on top and cooking the pasta and purée in the rendered fat as I normally would, but this light, pork-free version was simply amazing — just make sure you use plenty of cheese and pass more parmigiana  and pecorino at the table.

TIP: I started cooking pasta in infused water and I love the results, in this case I simmered water with dried herbs for 20 minutes to really bring out the flavor and then added my dried pasta. You will love it.