Pasta Carbonara

Carbonara was a dish that alluded me before I moved to Italy. It flies contrary to the cooking style of Americans. We view all sauces as containing cream or tomato sauce but this is not true of Italian pasta. The sauce is usually very simple, so simple we can’t imagine it to be correct.

The secret is in the technique and the quality of ingredients. Carbanara is a Roman dish simply of cooked pasta with raw eggs and diced pancetta (bacon) with Pecorino (Pecorino is aged sheep cheese). Quite possibly it was a result of WWII American military food rations which would explain the smoked bacon. It is also rumored to be a simple food fed to the coal miners in Rome, which would explain the name “Carbonara”.

Pasta Carbonara

1/4 pound dried spaghetti pasta per person

1 egg per person

1/4 cup of Pecorino cheese grated per person

1/4 cup of diced Pancetta per person

Black pepper

Salt

Water

I would suggest making this for two people to start with, four people max because it is the technique that is difficult and the more pasta the harder it is to manage. 

Set a large pan of salted water on to boil, at least 1 Tablespoon of salt, this is critical to mist Italian pasta recipes. Remember it’s a simple list of ingredients so make each one count. Cook the pasta “al dente” meaning “in the tooth”, the center of the pasta should still be firm or chewy.

Crack and whisk your eggs together in a bowl. Grate your cheese on a fine setting and reserve a few tablespoons for sprinkling on top later. Add the rest of the cheese to the whisked eggs along with a generous grind of black pepper.

Cook the diced pancetta or bacon on a large skillet. Italians like the pancetta cooked just to the translucent stage but I like mine a little browned but I think I just lost my “Italian Card” by saying that. Set aside until you are ready to add the pasta. You may want to drain some of the fat. In Italy we don’t drain it because there isn’t that much fat in the pan. If it looks like a lot of fat consider removing some.

Another real key to Pasta Carbonara is how you drain your pasta. Italians never dump their pasta out in the sink over a colander. That would be to waste all of that beautifully slated and starchy water. Actually the starchy water is a key ingredient in Carbonara and most Italian pasta recipes. So instead, cook the pasta right before you are ready to serve it and be ready to toss the pasta straight from the boiling water onto the skillet.

Turn the heat off from under the boiling pot of water. The pasta should be “al dente” especially since you will continue cooking it a little in the bacon.

This is the tricky part, I usually just get Jeff to do it for me, he is really good at it, as are most Italian men. You ladle the dripping pasta into the skillet that has cooked the bacon. You don’t want it to be too watery but you will need some of the dripping water. Once all of the pasta is in the skillet, you can add the egg cheese mixture to the skillet with the pasta. The heat can be on low but be careful not to cook the eggs, this is the worst that can happen to you, that you make scrambled eggs.

Instead you keep tossing the spaghetti in the skillet, lifting the spaghetti high in the air and continue moving it in this way, you may need to ladle a little more of the hot starchy water into the pasta. The end result should look like a beautiful yellow cream sauce, smooth and shiny but not raw and runny looking. Definitely not scrambled egg looking. Delicious when done correctly!

This recipe was adapted from MemoriediAngelina, click through for the original recipe

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