Alberto's Not so secret Carbonara recipe

[afoeder]

Source: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1GC_n7NCLW8i0WPQSj3HS1MIcENsKGkP2GfBkNNMSPcM/edit?pli=1

Credit totally goes to Alberto Brandolini, @ziobrando, I've just copied it here for reference in case it gets lost or deleted upstream. I hope that's OK.

My not so secret carbonara recipe

There are savage disagreements about publicly available carbonara recipes. The more I asked about how to prepare a good one, the more I felt like Dan Brown investigating about templars and inner circles: the more I learned, the more I discovered my carbonara could have been better and better. Whenever I thought I was close to the real secret recipe, somebody dropped me another little secret to make it better.

What is the problem with carbonara?

The real problem is that every carbonara is good until you try a better one. So people are happy with their own recipe and feel free to share it. I am probably running into the same mistake.
Shame on me for doing that. On a scale from 0 to 10 (being 10 the best carbonara I ever had in Rome) mine ranks around 8.5, I hit a 9 once, and I am consistently around that, but I know there is still room for improvement. I am a carbonara monk.
One can find carbonara on most restaurants in Italy, but what I consider the real one is what you can get in an ugly trattoria in Rome. That’s my reference.

One little secret

Apparently, carbonara is simple: not so many ingredients and quick preparation. So the secret number one is in choosing the right ingredients. No trade-offs. Of course, if you’re not in Italy, some trade-offs will be necessary. I’ll try to suggest alternatives, but you’ll have to feel guilty for not using the right ingredients. Feeling guilty is part of the deal.

Another little secret

Size matters. Carbonara in Rome is huge. And with a lot of sauce. Most of the recipes available online are for sissies. Half of the power of carbonara is in the amount of sauce.

Preparation

Warm the water and salt it, that’s the first thing to do, in the meanwhile, you’ll have time for preparing the sauce. If you’re confident with your timing, you can start preparing while the pasta is cooking.

Preparing the sauce

You’ll need * eggs* , many of them. Separate the yolk from the rest and put them in a little bowl. The rule says to use N+1 yolks (with N = Number of persons eating). However, this makes little sense with larger N (that’s not a recipe for mathematicians). And also with little pale yolks. Grocery store eggs aren’t necessarily your best friends.

Yolks will have to be mixed with cheese. The best choice is * pecorino romano* (again, heretic alternatives later). Grate it and mix it with the eggs. You haven’t grated enough. Grate a little more. Ok, now a little more again. When the fork has a hard time mixing the sauce you’re getting to it. Add a little more cheese, just to be sure.

Add a lot of * black pepper* to it, keep mixing.

Cooking the meat

Cut the * pork cheek* (see later for heretic alternatives) in little sticks, about 2-3 mm thick.

Warm a frying pan (if you plan to use it to mix the pasta later, make sure it is big enough), add the pork cheek, and stir.

Keep the fire high until the cheek starts becoming crispy.

You may add a spoon of the cooking water now, to show the pork cheek that you’re the one in control.

Cooking the pasta

This shouldn’t be a big deal, but there are some secrets, of course. In Rome, people tend to cook pasta a little less than in other cities. Maybe they cook it 20 seconds less, not that much, but enough to make a palatable difference. However, you must be aware that Italian pasta makers, like Barilla and DeCecco, tend to suggest higher cooking times for pasta sold in northern Europe, to match the local taste. Usually 1-2 minutes more. So … do some experiments with more aggressive cooking times.

Pecorino is quite salty. Some people balance this by not adding salt to the cooking water.

The most obvious choice of pasta is spaghetti, but use a thick one: avoid spaghettini (unless you’re a primary school kid) and favor the thicker vermicelli instead, or the squared spaghetti alla chitarra..

But the original pasta is something shorter like mezzemaniche rigate or rigatoni.

While cooking, add a spoon of the cooking water to the sauce and stir.

Putting it all together

This is the moment where the fate of the world is decided. The pasta is hot and could cook the egg, making a lumpy sauce. Losers add cream to the sauce to avoid this problem. Don’t do that. Use the force instead. Remember all that cheese we used before? It will pay off now.

Drain the pasta and put it in the frying pan with the bacon, and mix quickly. Then serve in the dishes and add the egg sauce.

You can still add some more cheese and some more black pepper. Enjoy your meal.

Ingredients

• Guanciale: a special seasoned pork cheek cut. See http://recipes.wikia.com/wiki/Guanciale for more details. However you’ll probably need a plan B. Bacon is a good plan B. In case bacon is missing too, or it’s simply not good enough, some seasoned Italian Ham would do the job.
• a Bay leaf.
• Pecorino Romano, this is a salty seasoned sheep cheese from Rome. If you can’t find it, then Parmigiano Reggiano would do the job. Strangely, Parmigiano is a more expensive cheese than pecorino romano, but for this task, it’s the second choice. If both are unavailable, I had decent results with a Spanish Manchego cheese.
• Black Pepper.
• Eggs. Really, if all you can find is little pale yellow yolks, consider breeding your chickens. You won’t regret it.

—Alberto Brandolini, @ziobrando