I have always wanted to make carbonara pasta simply because it is a simple pasta to make. In pasta-lore, carbonara pasta is like a holy-grail and that is my own definition. I have not had real roman-esque carbonara pasta in my life so I can't say how authentic or good my pasta is compare to the real deal. Take on its own, this pasta is really delicious. It is creamy as it should be.
Now that I know how easy it is to make carbonara pasta, may I make a plea to all restaurants around me that serve carbonara in cream to STOP. Just STOP doing what you are doing. If you want to keep doing it, fine, but don't call it carbonara pasta.
I will not spell out every step of how I made this dish. If you are interested, check out my main source of reference: Cook's Illustrated. Here, I will simply emphasise a few areas of note:
1 lb pasta (most websites say 1lb of pasta feeds 4 people. They must have been talking about feeding 4 giants. The way I see/eat it, 1 lb of pasta yields about 6-8 regular size servings)
3 cloves of garlic, minced
1 1/4 cup of cheese
3 eggs + 1 egg yolk
1 tsp pepper
1 tsp salt
6-8 strips of bacon
1 tablespoon of fat, I used ghee
I used cheddar cheese, not the fancy cheese (read: Pecorino-Romano). Before you cry "sacrilegious!", hear me out. It is not only expensive, it is also very difficult to find fancy cheese here in this part of my world. Invite me to cook for you, I will buy Pecorino but you pay! :)
Although I have heard of this way of cooking bacon, I have not done it before. The main problem this method solves is - oil splatter. I fully agree with the effectiveness of this method in creating crispy bacon with much much less oil splatter.
The carbonara sauce sans cheese. That will go in soon.
I toss my pasta over a double boiler.
The black bits that you see are not charred bacon. They are the brown bits of good stuff that caramelised on the pan. Millard reaction!
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