Carbonara
Recipe Origin: We hosted a French exchange student when I was in high school, and as a parting gift she made this for us on her last day. I have been refining the recipe ever since. It has definitely departed from her preparation, as I have refined it over the last ~15 years to my taste. It is my favorite dish in the whole world.
Tools:
Stockpot for pasta
Saute pan
Spatula (wooden or silicone, wooden is good for scraping shallot and bacon fond)
Knife
Cutting board
Onion goggles (they look lame but they made doing this recipe much easier, since there is such a long period of chopping shallots)
1 bowl to hold shallots, 1 bowl to hold onions, 1 small bowl to hold garlic, 1 small heat-resistant bowl for hot oil
Colander
Pasta scoop
Ingredients:
Olive oil (I use extra virgin)
Shallots (I use way more than is reasonable, like 10-15. Try 5-8 to start out, and increase or decrease based on your taste. You want enough to balance the salty savoriness of the bacon with the sweet savoriness of the shallots.)
Bacon (1lb)
1 Onion
Garlic (I also use way more than is reasonable, like a whole head. Use a few cloves to start and see what you think.)
Long pasta thick enough to stand up to a rich, creamy sauce (I use linguine or bucatini now, I started with fettucine)
Water for boiling pasta
Salt for pasta water
1 Egg
Heavy cream
Parmesan cheese (I started with shredded, I use grated more lately. Can get a nice parm from a cheese shop if you want to grate/shred some fresh.)
Tips:
The gold in this recipe is the melding of the flavors of the caramelized shallots and the bacon. I saute the shallots, remove them, and then saute the bacon in the shallot fond. Then I re-combine the shallots with the bacon to meld the flavors even further. If you know of a better way to fuse the two, by all means try it!
Don’t cover the shallot/bacon/onion pan ever, it will retain moisture that you don’t want in that mixture. You’ll want to make sure it stays exposed so that it browns up nicely, you don’t want it to steam.
Process:
Mis En Place - Chop the shallots, put them in a bowl. Chop the onions in thin crosswise lengths, put them in a bowl. Chop the garlic (I like doing in large chunks, I like biting into big chunks of garlic) and put in a small ingredient bowl. You can wait to chop the bacon til the shallots are in the pan.
Heat olive oil over medium heat in saute pan.
Fill stockpot with cold water, salt it, and set it over high heat.
Put the shallots into the saute pan.
Saute the shallots low and slow until they are a dark-golden brown. You’ll want to let the shallots sit for a few minutes at a time, in an even layer, then scrape them and flip them. You’ll know they’re close to ready when they start forming a gorgeous brown after you flip them. Don’t let them sit so long that they burn (though a slightly charred flavor can be nice if you’re in the mood for that).
Chop the bacon while you’re sauteing the shallots. Chop it into half-inch pieces.
Once the shallots are caramelized, move them to the same bowl you had them in before. Don’t worry about scraping every bit out of the pan, the bacon will grab this flavor when you saute it.
Add the bacon into the pan. Separate the pieces of bacon so that the bacon forms an even layer in the pan.
Saute the bacon until it is browned and a bit crispy. You’ll want to do this by letting the bacon sit for a few minutes at a time, then flipping it so that the other side can brown. Don’t let it burn.
You can scrape up the shallot fond now, or wait til the bacon is browned and you’ve re-introduced the shallots to scrape up all the fond then. I haven’t yet figured out which is best.
About halfway through the browning process, spoon oil from the pan into the small heat-resistant bowl to reserve in case onions need more cooking fat.
Once the bacon is browned, dump the shallots back into the pan. Mix them so that their flavors start melding. (This is the magic of this recipe.) Scrape up the fond if you haven’t yet.
Once the shallots and bacon have had a moment to spend some quality time together, add in the garlic. Cook a bit, til the garlic has had a little time to introduce itself to the group. (Also give it a sniff as the garlic meets the pan - this is my favorite olfactory moment of the recipe.)
Add in the onions. Stir them into the mixture, scooping the bacon/shallot mixture over the onions to help the onions wilt.
If there isn’t enough cooking fat in the pan for the onions to cook without burning, add some of the reserved bacon fat.
(Over the next few steps, continue to saute the bacon/shallot/onion mixture, allowing to sit for a few minutes and then flipping it, aiming for a beautiful golden-brown color on the onions. Once the onions are becoming a darker brown and are reduced down, turn the heat down.)
You want the onions to cook down to be browned and caramelized. Once the onions are about 3/4.of the way there, add the pasta to the boiling water in the stockpot.
I take half the pasta and break it in half, then add the rest whole. I like having some strands that are shorter and some that are longer.
The pasta will take about 10min to cook. Once the pasta is about 2min away from being done, prepare the cream sauce. Add an egg yolk to a bowl, and add enough heavy cream to make the cream a very light yellow color. Add parmesan cheese to taste, enough to make the sauce thick but not dry. Whisk to combine.
1 minute before the pasta reaches its listed cook time, use the pasta scoop to pull out a strand or two of pasta over the colander and test it for al dente. Cook the pasta til al dente.
Once the pasta is done, drain it in the colander. Dump it back into the stockpot.
Dump a little bit of the cream mixture into the pasta, stir to get a light coating onto the pasta.
Dump half of the bacon/shallot/onion mixture into the stockpot. Dump half of the remainder of the cream mixture onto that. Stir it into the bacon mixture to melt the cheese, then stir it all into the pasta.
Repeat this for the second half of the bacon mixture and the second half of the cream mixture.
Incorporate the bacon/shallot/onion mixture as well as you can into the pasta. I haven’t found a perfect way to incorporate it perfectly uniformly into the pasta - there is always some that ends up at the bottom of the stockpot, or in uneven chunks among the pasta. If you figure out a good way, let me know! Otherwise, just remember to scoop the bacon mixture from the bottom of the stockpot when you serve the dish.
Serve immediately with the pasta scoop!
I store this in the fridge in airtight containers, I am sure that others would find the leftovers perhaps less than ideal but I enjoy it after a good microwave zap.