SPAGHETTI CARBONARA

Spaghetti Carbonara is an Italian dish that is noodles coated in a creamy Pecorino, Parmesan and egg yolk based sauce with little pieces of Italian bacon called “pancetta”. It is easy and ready to fill your tummy in less than 30 minutes.Let’s cook some food!

Pancetta (pan-cheh’-tuh) is made of pork belly meat that is salt cured and spiced with black pepper and sometimes other spices.

A real Italian would probably recommend you to use quanciale (gwahn-chay-lay), which is cured meat and takes its name from guancia (“cheek”) because the meat comes from the pork jowl. It’s cured for about a month in salt, pepper, chili powder and sometimes sugar, then hung and aged for another month before being ready for market. If you can find it, go for it.

If you have neither pancetta nor quanciale, you can just use bacon. After all, they are in the same family. Pork fat rules!

For the cheese, I use Pecorino and Parmesan. Pecorino is easy to find nowadays in my local grocery store but if you can’t, just Parmesan will totally be fine. Grate them with a microplane or a box grater.

Add the olive oil to a large pan and heat over medium-high heat. Once hot, cook the pancetta until browned and crisp.

Add the garlic and saute with the pancetta for a few minutes. Remove the pancetta, garlic and rendered fat from the skillet and set aside for later use.

Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil. Cook the pasta until al dente, about 1 minute less than indicated on the package. With a ladle, scoop some of the hot water from the boiling pasta, and set aside in a small bowl. Drain the pasta in a colander.

Separate egg yolk from the white. I am using two eggs today because it’s just for me and my husband. I also cut the other ingredients in half from the recipe.

Add them in a large bowl with fresh grated Parmesan, Pecorino and some freshly ground black pepper.

Beat them together until combined. Whisk in the cooled pancetta with all of the fatty delicious oil.

It should take just a few whisks.

While the pasta is still hot, quickly add the sauce to the pasta and toss very well, then add a couple of very small scoops of the reserved pasta water to help create the carbonara sauce and its unique creaminess. It is very important that the pasta is hot when adding the egg mixture, so that the heat of the pasta cooks the raw eggs in the sauce.

Add more salt and pepper if needed. Garnish with some grated Parmesan, parsley and a drizzle of extra-virgin olive oil, and serve. Hope you enjoy this Spaghetti Carbonara recipe.