I did it! Pasta carbonara

Have you noticed my ever-growing list of foods I want to make over on the right sidebar? Pasta carbonara was one of the first on the list. I have been fascinated by carbonara for a while now. I think it was the idea of a raw egg being mixed into some hot noodles. How could that work? Isn't that some kind of health code violation?

Nonetheless, I tried it, first at Otto. I thought it was deliciously simple.


Making it, however, was a different story.

I tried over and over again, but always failed spectacularly. I'm not talking a little failure but still edible, I'm talking just plain gross. I somehow could not get the proportions and the consistency right. It just seemed like there was too much egg-y liquid.


Well, I finally did it, more or less successfully and I realized, this is a difficult dish to make for one person. One is the loneliest number!

I think it's because one egg does not necessarily equal one portion. This recipe, which I more or less followed, uses four eggs to a pound of spaghetti. When I tried to make one serving, I used probably an eighth of a pound of noodles with one egg. Too much egg.


My solution is to add more noodles (and therefore eat a lot more), or take out a little egg and add a little more cheese, until it has the "consistency of thick batter".


Oh, and to add bacon.


Egads, she's eating bacon!?! Yes, Reader, I dabble in a little pork, just for flavoring purposes. Honestly, I find I don't need it for this dish, but it is traditional to have a little pancetta or bacon (and accompanying grease) in carbonara sauce.


And mix, mix, mix, mix the hot noodles in the egg/cheese sauce.


This dish definitely requires freshly chopped parsley and lots of black pepper.

It really is a very fast meal to make so long as you have all the ingredients ready to go. Kind of a grown-up mac-and-cheese, without the baking time but with all of the decadence.