Chicken Carbonara

Ingredients:

Photo showing ingredients is not available.
Chicken
Bacon
Onion
Mushrooms
Peas
Garlic
Salt & pepper
Cooking Oil
Flour
Milk
Water
Half & Half
Sun-dried Tomatoes
Linguine
Parmesean cheese

Step 1:

First: Cut Bacon

Step 2:

Cook Bacon. Don't drain off the fat. Bacon fat is great for cooking. It has a high smoke point. Cooks will appreciate its ability to cook at high temperatures. Chemists will appreciate it's non-combustability due its highly stable saturated hydrocarbons. Bacon-enthusiests will appreciate its bacony-goodness.

Step 3:

Cut Chicken

Step 4:

Unfortunately this is not a meal made entirely of bacon so we'll have to put in low fat chicken breast. But don't worry - we'll add more fat later.

Step 5:

Check Bacon - Possibly Sample Bacon. Look at all the great sizzling bacon fat. Bam!

Step 6:

Add chicken

Step 7:

Prepare Onion. (I actually cut it all before I did anything else. It's always best to have these things ready when the heat is on. You don't want to have something burn while you're busy chopping.)

Step 8:

Add Onion

Step 9:

Prepare mushrooms

Step 10:

Add mushrooms. Now here's where you really have to start watching the bottom of the pan for the amount of oil. Chitin, the starch-like material that mushrooms are made of, soaks up fat like a sponge. I had to add about 2T/10ml of Vegetable Oil at one point when it got too dry. You want another high-temp oil here. Olive Oil and butter will not work.

Step 11:

Add peas. Peas are good in the sauce. They're a little sweet without being, well, really sweet. As they are frozen, they will cool your sauce down significantly. Crank up the heat to compensate and to boil off that pesky water.

Step 12:

Garlic. Now if you walk away from this with anything - it should be this. This is the best way to chop up garlic. Leave the skin on. You can peel it if you want to, but this is way easier. Smash the garlic with the side of your blade. Palm Strike!

Step 13:

The skin will basically fall off here. As an added bonus, more oil is released from the garlic making it more aromatic. Cover it with Olive Oil and a pinch of Salt (hard to see the salt). I didn't clean the blade once while chopping this. See? Not sticky. Add the garlic to the sauce here. Adding it earlier will cause your garlic to burn with the high heat.

Step 14:

Make it a white sauce. Sift flour in to the pan while stirring. Allow the flour to cook. This is where having enough fat/oil in the pan is very important. The cooked flour provides the thickness for the sauce. I ended up putting in about 4 spoon-fulls. Do this slowly to prevent clumping.

Step 15:

Half & Half - provides substance
Milk - provides some substance but can thin the sauce out if it's getting thick
Water - thin the sauce if it's getting thick (no worries if you add too much, it'll evaporate. In fact, this applies to cooking most anything as long as it doesn't have to be crispy. It took me several years to figure that out.)
Flour - Can help thicken, but it's very hard to add once you have milk in as the temperature stays at or below boiling. You want to make sure you get it in there first.

Step 16:

Now just play it by ear.

Step 17:

And what food would be complete without fresh ground pepper? Using something a little more expensive than the standard McCornmick-brand peppercorns makes a difference. This is filled with Malabar peppercorns from India.

Step 18:

Sun-Dried tomatoes add a little color and some "zing". That's a technical term meaning acidity.

Step 19:

I used linguine.

Step 20:

Reduce the sauce to low heat once you get it the way you want. Oh, and add a little salt to it. The bacon will add some, but not enough. Keep stirring it too and adding water as necessary to keep it at the thickness you want.