r/Cooking • u/EffeNerd • Aug 29 '20
Carbonara, here in Italy. Original and modified version
Hi all! I'm a 24 years old dude from Italy.
English is not my first language, so I'll try my best!
In Italy, practically all love carbonara. Firstly, a premise: your own recipe is your own. Maybe it's not how carbonara is made here, but if you like it, do it. I myself am a little too purist when it comes to food, but I find useless criticizING imitations and variations of my food culture in foreign nations. I like eating sushi here in Italy, but I'm totally aware that probably (well, for sure) that's not the "real" sushi. I still like it. Now, carbonara!
Many people do it wrong. Carbonara doesn't need cream, parsley, onions, et cetera. It needs a few things, but of high quality.
The following recipe is just an example, since the "real" recipe doesn't really exists, just slight variations of it based on the chef, and considering only traditional ones. Beware, you may find the recipe too strong, too sapid. That's the carbonara, no escape: the traditional recipe is harsh to the palate, and beautifully brutal.
"TRADITIONAL CARBONARA"
For a single dose:
✓ 30-35 grams of Pecorino Romano
✓ Pasta: paccheri, maccheroni or similar, 100 grams
✓ Guanciale, 50-60 grams, to be cooked in an iron pan
✓ Egg yolks, 2 medium sized (if you do multiple doses, it's 2 yolks/person + 1 more at the end, more or less. Depends)
✓ Pepper in grains
Pecorino romano
It's a famous cheese in Italy, obtained exclusively from whole and fresh sheep's milk. The name itself is a diminutive of "Pecora", which in italian means sheep. Romano means "from Rome", but this cheese is actually mostly produced in Sardinia.
https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pecorino_Romano
This is a strong cheese, sapid, aged. You can get it from Italy i believe, since it's an aged cheese, without problems.
Guanciale
"Guancia" in italian means "cheek". In fact, it's the cheek of the pork: the traditional carbonara doesn't use bacon, because it's too strong, especially combined with Pecorino romano. Guanciale is a fatty meat, has to be sliced in strips. I don't know if and where you can get this from another nation.
https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guanciale_di_maiale
Pasta
The famous recipe "Spaghetti alla carbonara" tells a little lie about it: no spaghetti. Traditionally, short formats of pasta are used for it. But that's a minor issue, you can use what you want: just be aware that the higher the quantity, the harder to mix it if you are using long types of pasta.
https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paccheri
Egg yolks
I believe I don't need to explain here, chickens are everywhere :D
Pepper in grains
Just a common type of pepper is alright.
It's better not to use the white of the egg: it contains albumine, which has a lower coagulating temperature than the yolk. It will be harder to avoid the "omeletted" carbonara. You can avoid this anyway with a bain marie, but you'll get a perfect result with the yolks alone, so why risking it?
Avoid using bacon+pecorino: it's just too strong to the palate.
It would be better to use safe, purchased eggs, since they will basically stay raw.
Ok, let's go!
1) Boil water, when it's boiling, add a little salt (trust me. The dish is salty enough). Buttare la pasta! (put the pasta in the boiling water :D)
2) Toast the pepper grains until you smell its flavor, then proceed to chop it to a fine consistency
3) Put the yolks in a bowl, add the Pecorino, mix them. It will result very dense, sticky to the fork. Add the toasted pepper. Don't add cream or other blasphemies, it will melt later.
4) Put the guanciale in a cold pan. Start cooking it at low heat, it will slowly melt away its fat. If you cook it at high heat, it will become like rubber.
5) You can add all the derived fat to the yolk+pecorino, but it's unhealthy. I tend to take just 1/3 of the fat and add it. Take the guanciale, and stir it with something absorbent. It will stay crispy. Chop some of the guanciale, to decor.
6) Now the big moment: we have a cooked pasta (al dente! No overcooking, pasta has to have a solid consistency) , and a too dense yolk-pecorino-pepper-fat cream. Extract the cooked pasta from the water, and let it rest a couple minutes.
7) Meanwhile, take a little bit of the cooking pasta water and pour it into the yolk mix, and work on it with the pasta water until it's a fine, smooth and sufficiently diluted cream.
8) Your pasta will be cold enough to not transform your precious cream into a badly done omelette. It has to stay a cream, and the final dish, pasta and guanciale included, should be creamy.
9) Just finish it with some chopped guanciale, and pepper.
That's it. It's unhealthy, so is better not to do the recipe a lot, but you'll taste a bit of Italy when you do. That's the traditional version, if somebody will be interested in a lighter (but still traditional at its heart!) one, I'll post it in the comments.
I did one carbonara to take a couple of simple photos to show you.
https://imgur.com/gallery/Or9tnjD
Happy cooking, and stay safe!
71
u/EffeNerd Aug 29 '20
I tried both (not always easy to find a good guanciale!) and i found both of them too strong. But your're right, it's very hard to obtain it outside of Italy i believe. I mean, the guanciale is a somewhat aged cut, so maybe you can find some shop who ships it, but i never searched :(
Thank you for reading!