Spaghetti alla Carbonara

Duration: 15 min

Difficulty:  Easy

Region: Lazio

Today I want to propose a simple recipe, but with strong flavours: spaghetti alla Carbonara. Who doesn’t know this dish? Traveling around Italy I have seen this dish appreciated in the most disparate regions. Even abroad it has its moderate success, despite having seen some rather questionable variations of carbonara…;)

Spaghetti alla Carbonara is a typical dish of Rome, whose origins still seem uncertain: The most accredited hypotheses make it a typical Lazio tradition, coming from the carbonari who came to Rome from the Lazio and Abruzzo Apennines. The “carbonari” (Roman term for charcoal burners) prepared a dish called “cacio e ova” of Lazio and Abruzzo origins, a very popular dish because of the easy availability of the ingredients. This dish was prepared the day before, then brought to work inside the “tascapane”. Hence the diffusion of a dish of pasta “alla Carbonara” made of eggs and cheese.

The secret of carbonara lies precisely in the post-cooking addition of a beaten egg and cheese mixture, and in a quick creaming of the beaten egg with the pasta “hot enough” but not so much that the beaten mixture curdles.

Pairing Wine: Frascati Superiore DOCG

Ingredients

Doses for 4 people:

• 2 eggs
• 360 g of Spaghetti or Tonnarelli
• Grated Pecorino Romano
• 3 slices of Guanciale
• black pepper
• 1 tablespoon of extra virgin olive oil

Typical product: Pecorino Romano

Typical product: Guanciale di Amatrice

How to Proceed

In the recipe you can use both spaghetti (bought pasta) and tonnarelli (a format of fresh pasta typical of Rome). In the following photos we will use tonnarelli, but the procedure is practically the same as that with spaghetti (only the cooking time of the pasta changes).

First, let’s boil water in a pot. In the time that will heat up we will be able to prepare both the sautéed and the beaten.

Let’s prepare the slammed. Take the two eggs (not from the refrigerator) and place them in a bowl.

Add the grated pecorino in abundance.

Beat the eggs and the pecorino until you have a fairly homogeneous mixture.

If you bought bacon in slices, that’s fine, otherwise if you bought a piece of bacon, remove the rind.

Then cut into slices that are not so thin (at least that’s the tradition).

Then cut them into many strips as shown in the photo below.

Put everything to fry in a pan. I add a sprig of rosemary, which I will then remove before adding the pasta, just to give the oil an extra aroma. Don’t fry the bacon completely. But at some point turn off to wait for the pasta to cook.

If the water is boiling, add the salt, then the spaghetti alla chitarra. Just before the spaghetti is ready, turn the pan back on with a very high heat. You must hear the guanciale sizzle. If you haven’t done so yet, remove the rosemary and when the sauté has reached a good temperature and the guanciale begins to appear crunchy, add the pasta.

Return the pasta to the pan so that the aromas of the guanciale are transferred to the pasta, rumbling the pasta if possible.

Once the pasta has been sautéed in the pan, turn off the gas. After a few seconds and only then add the beaten egg and pecorino cheese, taking care to mix the spaghetti. A yellow sauce will form, adhering perfectly to the spaghetti.

Pour the spaghetti into the various dishes.

Then grate the pecorino over each plate (abundantly) without stirring. The dish must be presented like this.

Add the grated pepper and a drop of raw oil on top of the cheese. Finally, serve the dishes. Here spaghetti alla carbonara are ready, Buon Appetito.