1 lb spaghetti (thin), rotini or equival, ent pasta
2 tbsp olive oil
1/2 lb pancetta or bacon
1 medium yellow onion (chopped)
1/2 cup cold water
1/4 cup italian white wine, dry
4 eggs
4 tbsp heavy cream
8 tbsp parmesan cheese (grated)
Directions
Put large bowl in oven to warm at lowest possible setting. Soak
chopped onion in cold water for 15 minutes to reduce pungency. Chop
Pancetta or bacon into 1/4-inch x 1-inch strips.
Beat eggs and cream together with a fork. Add about 4 T Parmesan
cheese to the mixture.
Wash pasta. Put on water to cook pasta. Add pasta when boiling. In
the meantime...
Dry onions and saute with pancetta or bacon in olive oil until onions
are barely translucent. Add wine and reduce heat when initial
boiling ceases. Meat should not be crisp.
When pasta is cooked, drain, but DO NOT WASH. Quickly remove bowl
from oven, put pasta in it and toss with egg, cream and cheese
mixture so that heat from pasta cooks eggs. Add meat, onions and wine
without draining fat and toss until thoroughly mixed. Sprinkle
remaining cheese to taste, toss and serve immediately.
NOTES:
* Spaghetti Carbonara, Neapolitan Style -- My wife and I had the
pleasure of staying at the Villa Virgiliana (owned by The Vergilian
Society) in Cuma, Italy just outside of Naples in June, 1985. Biagio
and Maria Sgariglia, the proprietors of the villa, served us
excellent Italian farm meals for a week, each meal being more
delicious than the last. This dish was the gastronomic highlight of
our stay.
* Pasta should be cooked AL DENTE so that it offers resistance to the
teeth without crunching. Fresh pasta is desirable (dried pasta is a
poor imitation of the real thing.) Pasta should be used immediately
when done so as to stop its internal cooking. If both portions of the
recipe cannot be completed at the same time, the meat and onion
mixture should finish first.
* I have made a very successful variation on this using hot country
sausage. Make sure the sausage is fairly lean if you try it, however.
All of the quantities are adjustable and may depend on the kind of
pasta or meat you use. Too much cream will cause the egg mixture to
separate from the pasta and meat. Too little cream will essentially
give you scrambled eggs and bacon with pasta.
: Difficulty: moderate to hard (timing is critical).
: Time: 30 minutes.
: Precision: measure the ingredients.
: Byron Howes
: North Carolina Education Computing Service, Research Triangle Park,
NC : bch@ecsvax or {akgua,decvax}!mcnc!ecsvax!bch
: Copyright (C) 1986 USENET Community Trust
Servings: 3 servings
Biagio's Spaghetti Carbonara Recipe brought to you by Recipe Ideas
Categories: Italian; Pasta
The History of Recipes
Experts have found proof that recipes existed back into ancient history, in fact as far as early Egypt, and possibly even further than that. In practice though, in the main part, these ancient records were just very simple pictorial instructions for food preparation.
In fact, the most ancient recipe discovered so far, according to Professor Solomon Katz, are some stone tablets in the Sumerian language which show the preparation of bread which is then used to make a drink, quite possibly a form of beer as it is recorded as having made anyone who tried it feel blissful. Later, there are two interesting cookery books from the 14th Century : a recipe book titled `Forme of Cury`, and another named `Curye on Inglish`. Don`t be fooled by the titles though, these are not about the indian curry that is familiar to us all today, but rather descriptions of the types of food on the menues of the rich and wealthy people of that period. For the decades that followed, the wealthy families of Wesstern Europe tried to lay on the best banquets, and because of this the best cooks and their collection of recipes were highly sought after. Notwithstanding that, it wasn`t until the nineteenth century that fine cooking and recipe books really came of age. Mrs Isabella Beeton in the UK, and the equally famous Fannie Merritt Farmer in the USA, devoted much of their lives to assembling, verifying, and publishing the recipes that were being prepared for the better households. The arrival of television brought us celebrity chefs and the spin-off recipe books. Which pretty much brings us to the present day and the invention of computers and the internet, permitting us all to access massive numbers of recipes like those on our site. |
We hope you enjoy this Biagio's Spaghetti Carbonara recipe.
