One Pan Corgetti Carbonara

I received a Tesco Orchard Voucher for £2 off Tesco Fruit and Veg, so I decided to buy something I wouldn't usually buy. I bought some courgetti, a spaghetti substitute made from courgette, because I'd heard a lot of people taking about it.

I decided to make a healthier Carbonara using the courgetti, as I love Carbonara but it's not the healthiest of dishes. My thrown together recipe is found below. I served it with some baby sweetcorn I also got with my vouchers. Both I and the hubby loved it. Suggestions on improvements would be welcome :)

Ingredients (serves 2)
Small amount of cooking oil
Courgetti - Can be bought pre-prepared in Tesco, or made using a spirlizer.
Bacon - fat cut off
Garlic - I use garlic powder as it's easy to store, but fresh garlic does just as well. I used the equivalent of 1 garlic clove.
50ml Milk
1 Large Egg
Handful of Grated Cheese - Traditionally Parmesan is used, but I used extra mature cheddar because that's what we had in!
Salt and Pepper to taste

Method
1. Heat oil in frying pan. Cut bacon into small pieces, discarding fat.
2. Fry bacon in oil. When bacon is cooked add the Courgetti and garlic, stirring regularly. Cook for 4 minutes.
3. Whisk together milk, egg and half of the cheese. Add salt and pepper to taste.
4. A bit at a time, add the milk/egg mixture to the frying pan, stirring continuously. Allow egg to cook through and reduce for 5 minutes, or until liquid is mostly gone.
5. Serve with cheese sprinkled on top.

Tesco Christmas pudding - trial tasting

 I received a voucher from Tesco Orchard for £10 off their Finest Christmas pudding, which as they were on for half price got me two for free! One for us and one for foodbank.

The packaging was very attractive but I noticed some of the boxes were damaged, so picked out boxes that weren't. When I got the puddings home the cardboard package had buckled, because it couldn't support the weight of the heavy puddings. Not a big deal, but I'd expect better from the Tesco Finest Range.

We cooked the pudding in the microwave which took less than 10 minutes, so that would be perfect after a hectic Christmas dinner! We served it with custard, which went down a treat. The pudding had an excellent texture and flavour. Both my husband and I loved the addition of the nuts as it gave an extra crunch to the moist pudding. The fruit was very juicy and flavorsome. I found the alcoholic nature of the pudding a bit overwhelming, but my pudding loving husband thought it was just spot on! The pudding was very moreish, and we both wanted more than one slice! I'm not sure I'd manage more than one slice after a big Christmas dinner though. Overall I'd give the pudding a 4/5, because whilst it was tasty and easy to prepare I'm not sure it's worth £10.

I'm not cooking Christmas dinner this year, but I think i may end up in charge of pudding! ;)

Do you make your own Christmas pudding or do you buy it?

Rainbow Trout Recipes

I've recently joined Tesco Orchard, a scheme run by Tesco that lets you try products for free in exchange for reviews and opinions. I got my first voucher in the post this week for fresh fish. I was delighted, as I've been trying to get more Vitamin D into my diet to help the MS, and I knew fish could help.

After a quick google search the fishmonger was able to recommend rainbow trout as a fish high in Vitamin D, so I decided to use the voucher to try it out!

With the help of my husband we cooked two delicious fish dishes.

Having not cooked much fresh fish before we cheated and went for a pre-made sauce! We settled on a Schwartz Sweet Chilli, Lime and Coriander sauce, and it was scrummy.

We rubbed the trout with olive oil, salt and pepper, before wrapping in tin foil and baking at 200C for 25 minutes. We served this with the sauce, boiled potatoes and green beans.

We had two fillets left, and so the next night we used the rest of the sauce to make a vegetable and noodle stir fry, including pepper, mushroom, and home grown spring onions (see my youtube video on how to grow your own spring onions). This was a great tasting way to use up the left over fish, and the flavours went wonderfully together! I didn't feel confident putting the fish in the stir fry, as there were a few small bones in the fish that I felt would have been a bit more difficult to detect if served in that way.

I enjoyed both these dishes tremendously and I really want to eat fish more often. Do you have any favourite fish recipes to share? I'd love to read them!