Carbonara (WHAAAAT)
I don't know what came over me last night, but I walked into the kitchen feeling the following things:
1. I'M HUNGRY.
2. PASTA
3. NO MORE TOMATOES. EVER.
4. BACON.
This is probably due to the fact that for the past three days I've been surviving off of fresh fruit and vegetables (and the accompanying homemade white bean dip) alone. Read: I'm hungry all of the time.
Things started moving in my brain and I decided to attempt a carbonara.
Dudes. This stuff is glorious. I guess I've always been intimidated by the whole add-egg in at just the right time/temp/whilst stirring constantly or else your pasta turns into scrambled eggs and pasta (gross), but it was actually pretty easy. And it makes the pasta so creamy without adding any actual cream.
Brilliant. Bravo, Italians.
I selected this tube-lookin, not quite penne, not quite ziti, job. I'm all about that surface area to volume ratio and these guys seemed to fit the bill.
You Will Need:
12 ounces of pasta
4 ounces of pancetta (I used bacon, whatevs), diced
3 cloves minced garlic
1/2 onion, minced
2 eggs
1 cup parmesan
salt
fresh ground black pepper
Cook pasta according to the instructions - you def want it al dente for this recipe, so 8-10 minutes should do the trick. Drain the pasta, reserving about 1/2 cup of pasta water.
In a medium saucepan, cook pancetta until browned, add garlic and onion and cook until softened. I added yellow squash and some peas to mine at this point, but you can skip if it you hate things like vegetables.
Take off the heat and mix the pancetta mixture in with the pasta.
In a medium bowl, beat eggs and add in parmesan. Mix to work out all of the lumps.
With a pair of tongs (har har) toss pasta while slowly adding in the egg mixture.
The egg mixture will do this glorious thing where it coats the pasta. Allow it to happen.
If you think it's too thick, add some of the reserved pasta water to thin it out.
Season with salt and plenty of fresh ground black pepper.
That's it!
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