Pizza & Pasta 'Carbonara'

We had pizza for dinner last night, not quite as good as a real one from the pizzeria we live above, but on a budget it will do. Its easy to buy ready made pizza dough, as you could imagine in Italy but at home you can buy packets of dough mix that you just add water to. Then just top the dough with passata or tomato purée and then whatever else you want! We had one with mozzarella with parma ham, fresh spinach & parmesan. The other had mushrooms and mozzarella. We definitely could have eaten one each, but I don't have the oven space, so we had cornflakes covered in nutella for pudding while watching Great British Bake Off.

This evening we had my own variation on pasta carbonara. By no means the traditional recipe (no egg and extra chorizo) this one came about when I had my own ready steady cook challenge one week when there was not a lot of food in the fridge back home.

Serves 4
Ingredients:
1 Onion (Finely Chopped)
2 Garlic Cloves (Finely Chopped)
1 Pack Lardons/ 4 rashers Bacon (Sliced)
100g Chorizo (Diced)
Handful Parsley (Finely Chopped)
3 Tbsp Philadelphia/ Cream Cheese
1 Large Handful Parmesan (Grated)
1 Packet Pasta (Any Type)
Salt, Pepper, Olive Oil

Place a pan of salted water on to boil. Once boiled, add the pasta and cook for 15 minutes.

Fry the onions and garlic in a little oil and add the chorizo and lardons. Once cooked thoroughly, add the cream cheese and the parmesan with 5 tbsp of boiling water (use the water for the pasta). Stir together and leave to simmer for 5 minutes. Add a pinch of salt and pepper and half of the chopped parsley. Once the pasta is cooked, drain and stir into the sauce. Top with the remaining parsley and serve with grated parmesan on the side.

We ate a whole pack of pasta again today - but we had a two hour seminar - more time than is usually expected from a history student, so we had to treat ourselves.