Day 97: Of Eggs and Pasta
Here’s a quick and, in some places, hodge-podge carbonara recipe.
You will need:
- Pasta noodles. Long is good. Angel hair is preferred, but spaghetti is just fine. Fettuccini is also good, but it’s a thicker noodle, so allot for space. I’m not a big fettuccini fan, so I rarely use it. I like angel hair quite a bit, but it can’t stand up to heavy sauces, and since I make spaghetti at least once every two weeks, it doesn’t have a regular place in my kitchen. I use the old stand-by. Pasta is easy to make, fairly quick, and filling, so it’s good to always have some on hand when in a pinch. If you’re going to keep it like that, find a good brand in a sealed plastic bag, as it’ll keep longer than in a box.
- Prosciutto. You know what prosciutto is? Fancy bacon. You know what else works really well for this? Normal bacon.
- Garlic.
- Cream. Heavy cream. This is a rich dish, so go all out. If you don’t keep heavy cream on hand, melt a little butter and slowly mix it in with the sauce. The milk for the sauce should not be skim.
- Eggs. You’ll just want the yolks. There are little thing that you can put an egg through that holds the yolk and lets the whites pass through. That’s for damn weiner kids. Do the neat chef thing where you crack the egg in half, and keep passing the yolk back and forth from shell to shell.
- Cheese. A shit ton of cheese. Parmesan, specifically. But really any hard white cheese which you can shred will do, or you know, buy at the store pre-destroyed. Seriously, if you like parm, you can’t go wrong here.
- Lemon. Lemon zest is nice, but is a luxury. I only ever have it if I’m making this dish for dinner, and thus am making cocktails; otherwise, what the hell do you do with a skinless lemon? To zest, you can buy a zester, but they rarely work well. Just get a good cheese grater, and using a smallish grate size, rub the lemon (or lime or orange) on it, being very careful not to get the white part (aka the pith). The skin is like the essence of the fruit and this huge explosion of flavor. The pith, on the other hand, is bitter and hateful.
- Meat. Another luxury. Chicken is traditional, and I usually just use a pre-cooked chicken. The dish as a whole is the main event, not the chicken, so you don’t have to get fancy. If you are making the chicken from scratch, smother them sumbitches in olive oil, give them a fine coat of salt and pepper, and then grill or pan fry. Otherwise I use leftovers, but sometimes I swing by KFC or a Charlie Biggs and buy five or six chicken tenders. The roasted chickens they serve at Kroger or Wal-Mart are also serviceable. Italian sausage works, as dp other types of pork. I don’t like beef in a cream sauce, but hey, go nuts; it’s your damn dinner.
- Herbs. Fresh basil was put on Earth by God just for dishes like this. Rough cut the herb once and add to sauce. Flat-leaf (aka Italian) parsley is also great, and if you like oregano, add oregano.
Get a big pot, fill with water, and as always, add salt to the water.
While your pot is getting hot, take out a pan, and put to heat on high. Get a pretty big pan to finish the carbonara in (that means the bacon, meat, sauce, and noodles all in the same place). Unless you don’t mind doing the dishes, if that’s the case, get crazy. Use twelve pans.
Slice up your bacon into small pieces. You may want to pat it dry first, as if it’s wet or damp, the bacon will stick together, and makes cooking them through the opposite of fun. Get however much garlic you want, and start smashing the shit out of them with the flat of your knife. Once the pan is hot enough, add the bacon and garlic.
Get two containers, a big one and a smaller one. The big one is for the sauce, the little one of the egg whites. 6-8 eggs is a good number for a pound of spaghetti, however 12-16 is not good for two pounds. After one pound, maybe 10 eggs… I really have no idea. Trust your instincts. Use the force. Believe in Neo.
So, anyway, put your egg yolks in the big one and your whites in the little one. Whisk the yolks just enough to break them up.
Add the cream (or milk/butter amalgam) to the mixture with more gentle whisking. 2 to 2 ½ cups is good for the cream, and maybe ½ a cup butter for 2 cups of milk. At the end of the day, it’s butter. Who doesn’t like butter?
Cut your herbs, and add to the mix.
Add all your cheese, then some salt and some pepper, and whisk it all together.
You were checking on your bacon and garlic while slowly assembling the mixture, right? Also, as soon as the water’s boiling, and the eggs are at least separated, add the pasta.
Okay, now you have a bowl full of egg whites, what do you with them? Honestly, I don’t have that big of a hard-on for tradition that I’m just going to throw away perfectly good egg whites. You can transfer the bacon and garlic to another plate, or get a new pan, but that’s just more dishes. If you can, slide the bacon pan over the heat source, put all the meat and garlic to one side, and have the heat on the other side. Cook your egg whites in the free space. Once the eggs are cooked through, break them up with a spatula, spoon, fork, your bare damn hands, etc.
Once the pasta is cooked and drained (save a little bit of that pasta water), add your meat (if you have it) to the egg, bacon, and garlic pan, and let it warm up on a low heat. Medium is too hot.
Add your pasta, and mix everything together. If it’s not mixing well, or seems a little short sauce wise, now would be a good time to utilize pasta water.
Add your sauce, slowly mixing it all together as it reduces. Let the stuff sit so the eggs cook, but not so long that the sauce gets too hot, too fast because the eggs won’t cook with the sauce; they’ll cook much faster. Note: if this happens, scrambled eggs, bacon, and spaghetti is one of the better accidents to have befall you.
If you’re a spice and herb kind of person, add some finely chopped basil to the top or in bowl for people to use as they will and pepper flakes for more direct heat.
Matt