Carbonara & Bolognese...Sort Of

This post is a follow-up thought on how to make the most of leftover sauces—something that I found myself doing in the past days as dissertation word counts gathered in the psyche like stony, spring thunderheads.

It turns out that the creamy mustard sauce that we used for the haddock yielded far more than we were able to slather on the fish. So, having taken care not to touch the raw flesh with the spoon while applying the sauce, there was plenty left to be used in…something. Inspiration struck when D. had a chicken breast and bacon, et voila: creamy chicken pasta.

Well, actually, to be fair, it ended up as simply creamy pasta with leftover fish—a kind of mustardy, bastard cousin of carbonara. Both of us stood dumbly before the chicken breast in its Ziplock bag, clueless as to how long, exactly, it had been sitting in the darker depths of the communal kitchen’s refrigerator. Our senses told us ‘go on’, but a little voice inside whispering ‘you’ll be sorry—explain this one later to your supervisor’ got the better of us.

We started by rendering the streaky bacon, and here is a wee aside on bacon:

British bacon comes from the back of the pig (hence the distinguishing term ‘back bacon’), whereas American bacon is cut from the belly of the pig. The higher fat content of the belly meat is what gives American bacon (what the Brits call ‘streaky bacon’) its marbled goodness that allows it to crisp up to that delectable, crunchy texture. While both varieties are usually salt cured, American bacon is often smoked, elevating that crispy goodness to piggy nirvana. I suppose my loyalties here are less than veiled…but back to this pasta.

I removed excess fat and browned the bacon.

I then thinned out our leftover sauce with half-fat milk. This both cut the mustard (its harshness, that is. Oh, who doesn’t love a pun?) and created a proper cream sauce.

We then threw in some fresh tomatoes and red capsicum (bell pepper) with the bacon, added the sauce, and tossed with linguine. Yum! I have no doubt this would be good with chicken as well.

Another successful experiment involved a pasta bake sans pasta. Earlier in the week I’d made a simple Bolognese with onion, garlic, herbs, passata, tomato paste, crushed tomatoes and ground beef. Feeling like something lighter than pasta, I decided to improvise.


I had cherry tomatoes, an aubergine, a courgette, baby portabella mushrooms, and yellow capsicum. Thus, with the addition of mozzarella cheese, became the no-pasta bake (not to be confused with no-bake pasta).

I sliced, salted, let stand, and rinsed the aubergine; I cut the courgette into long slices (the long way, as with the aubergine), and chopped the cherry tomatoes and mushrooms in half. Using plenty of olive oil, garlic, and salt and pepper, I sautéed the aubergine until browned on both sides, followed by the courgette, and, finally, the mushrooms. I threw the cherry tomatoes in with the leftover sauce.

Then, it was traditional construction of layered lasagne (minus the béchamel and pasta). The thin-sliced sections of aubergine and courgette acted like pasta, however, soaking up the tomato juices while flavouring the whole dish. While not exactly ‘light’ in the end, the vegetables were tender and delicious, and it saved the Bolognese from going to waste.