Eggplant Carbonara

            For a fancy homemade Sunday afternoon lunch, I decided to make a low-carb “pasta” carbonara. Usually this pasta is seen made using spaghetti squash or zucchini ribbons in place of traditional pasta to replace the delicious Italian starch with a non-starchy vegetable that mimics the texture of pasta. On this particular day, I actually intended to make spaghetti squash carbonara, however, in my home of Spanish Harlem – I could not find spaghetti squash, nor zucchini in my local grocery store. Deciding to be creative, I thought, we can julienne eggplant for a pasta-esq dish! So here came the invention of Eggplant Carbonara.

            This recipe uses a traditional and basic pasta carbonara recipe and simply replaces the pasta with eggplant. One thing that I did not realize upon choosing eggplant as my pasta alternative was that eggplant turns to mush when cooked. This dish – although it does taste much like a “pasta” carbonara – has a texture and appearance that is closer to baba ganoush. Either way, it was delicious.

Ingredients

12 slices lean turkey bacon or pancetta, diced

1 tsp olive oil

2 large eggplants, julienned

3 medium eggs

1 ½ cups parmesan cheese

Directions

1.      Bring water to a boil in a large stew pot. Drop julienned eggplant into boiling water and cook for 10 minutes.

2.      In a separate large sauté pan, heat olive oil and then add diced pancetta. Cook until crispy.

3.      Add eggplant to sauté pan with pancetta. Cook until excess moisture from eggplant evaporates.

4.      In a separate bowl, whisk together three eggs.

5.      Remove sauté pan from heat. Pour whisked eggs over eggplant and pancetta. Using tongs, toss eggplant until evenly coated with pancetta and egg.

6.      Toss parmesan cheese over eggplant and pancetta mixture. Using tongs, toss altogether until cheese is evenly distributed through eggplant.

7.      Serve and enjoy!

Tip: Serve on the side of strawberry and asparagus salad (see image and previous recipe).