Varriations on a Theme: Carbonara

Everyone appears to know about spaghetti alla carbonara these days, but I'd never heard of it before coming to Italy.  It belongs to the general class of 'bachelor foods' whose Italian name I've forgotten and is distinguished by its quick cooking time (you can make the sauce while you cook your pasta) and the dubious quality of including all the major food groups.  In this case pasta, meat and egg.  And I think that every person out on their own for the first time should know how to make it, because spaghetti alla carbonara is really quick, cheap and good.

The classic version is roman (as in from the city of Rome, not from the empire) and goes like this:  Start your pasta water.  Heat olive oil in a pan with a pinch or two of crushed red pepper and a chopped/crushed clove of garlic.  When the garlic starts to turn brown, take it out and put in some diced guanciale (or pancetta, if you're feeling inauthentic and posh, or bacon, if you happen to be feeling Anglo-Saxon).  Grate some pecorino romano (or parmigiano -- see above).  When your pasta is finished cooking drain it, put it back in the pot and pour the oil/pepper/meat over it, crack a raw egg in and stir vigorously, adding the cheese as you have time.  The heat of the just cooked pasta (and olive oil) should cook the egg, leaving you with a wonderfully rich creamy sauce.  If it looks like you just made scrambled eggs in your spaghetti you didn't stir fast enough.  Garnish with more cheese and crushed red or black pepper.  Enjoy.


So, it's really easy, very cheap and extremely quick to make, plus counts as a whole meal in a country that considers 3 courses with sides a bare minimum.  Great.  But what I really love about this stuff is how adaptable the basic concept is.  Take some kind of cured meat and an egg and tweak it in whatever way you want.  Cream and mushrooms are pretty common adjuncts, but Ron Suhanosky mentions in Pasta Sfoglia that he considers his guanciale, carrot and vin santo cream sauce (which does not use an egg, but is very good) a carbonara variant.

This Wednesday's meal wasn't quite that exciting, but does illustrate a nice little riff on the basic theme.  Wednesday is a butchers holiday, so I couldn't pick up guanciale, but we did have some salamino toscano (think large chunks of both meat and fat), which I figured was also cured pork and therefore fair game.  A leek, a clove of garlic, crushed red pepper and an egg rounded out the ingredient list.

After getting the pasta water started I diced a few slices of salamino and added them, along with the crushed red pepper to some olive oil to toast for a minute or two, then followed them with a finely sliced leek and a clove of garlic.  By the time the spaghetti was feeling done the leek had become nicely caramelized.  Drain pasta, pour in the cooked bits and a small handful of grated pecorino romano, crack an egg and stir and that's it.  I'm not a huge fan of the whole 10-minute-meal thing, but it's useful to have some quick and easy dishes in your back pocket to make on nights when you're tired, don't have much time and want something nourishing.  This is one of the best for those times.




(I also think it makes a good dish to impress with for someone just starting out on their own who hasn't had much of a chance to build up a kitchen, but that's just a theory)