Cheat's Spaghetti Carbonara

I never had any success making carbonara - trying to get a smooth, creamy sauce always turned into a scrambled egg disaster, until I discovered this tweak to the recipe. It's not an orthodox carbonara, and I'm sure any true Italian would raise their eyebrows at the changes I've made to the ingredients, but it's delicious, quick and foolproof. If you make it with smoked bacon it tastes even better.  

Serves 2

Ingredients:
A few rashers of smoked bacon or pancetta
1 garlic clove, peeled
Half an onion, finely chopped
2 tbsp double cream or elmlea
1 egg
200g Spaghetti

If you're using bacon, chop in to small pieces. I kept the rind on to add more flavour to the sauce.
Heat up a frying pan - you shouldn't need to add any oil to the pan, the bacon will release enough fat.
Add the bacon, chopped onion and the whole garlic clove and fry on a low heat until the onion is soft and translucent and the bacon crispy. Remove the garlic clove and take the frying pan off the heat.

While the onions and bacon are cooking, put a pan of water on to boil and cook your spaghetti. When it's ready, drain it but reserve the cooking water - you might want to use some to loosen up the sauce later.

Mix together the egg and cream.

Add the cooked spaghetti to the pan with the onion and bacon. Pour over the egg and cream mixture, and rapidly stir everything together. You shouldn't have the frying pan on the heat at this point - the residual heat will be enough to cook the egg in the sauce. If there isn't enough sauce, add a little of the pasta cooking water that you saved earlier.

Serve quickly before it cools down, with lots of black pepper, and some grated parmesan if you like.