Spaghetti alla Carbonara
This is a recipe for carbonara without cream (the authentic Italian way). It’s very simple, you only need 3 main ingredients to turn make this carbonara: bacon, Parmesan cheese and egg.
See Also:
The challenging aspect of making carbonara is to cook the egg in the sauce thoroughly (half-cooked or raw egg taste is a no-no), yet never to scramble the egg (the absolute fail of aesthetics no matter how good it tastes). Check out the fail-safe steps in the recipe on the next page, on how to achieve this.
And by the way, authentic carbonara uses pancetta (Italian salt cured bacon), but I couldn’t find it at the local supermarkets, so I substituted with streaky bacon. I’m still happy :) I know Carrefoure used to sell it, but the chain had since closed down.
Update: Thank you readers for your sharing via comments on where to buy pancetta in Singapore.
^ Carbonara Gallery. Please wait for images to load.
Carbonara Recipe
To cook the egg to a creamy sauce but prevent it from scrambling:
1) Temper egg mixture with pasta water
2) The pan must be taken off the heat, and the pasta must be freshly cooked (hot), when tossing everything together.
Ingredients:
- 200 grams spaghetti or your favourite pasta
- 120 grams pancetta or bacon diced
- 1/2 tbsp olive oil
- 2 garlic cloves finely chopped
- 1/2 glass dry white wine such as Sauvignon blanc
- 2 eggs
- 40 grams grated Parmesan cheese plus extra to serve
- 1/2 ladle hot pasta water
- a small handful of Italian flat-leaf parsley finely chopped; to serve
- sea salt
- freshly cracked black pepper
Directions:
- In a heated pan, fry bacon until browned and crisp. Add olive oil and garlic. When the garlic is fragrant, add white wine to deglaze the pan. Let the sauce simmer down for a minute. Take the pan off the heat and set aside.
- Bring a pot of water with 1 tbsp sea salt to boil. Cook spaghetti until al dente (firm with a bite; usually minus about 2 minutes from package recommended timing).
- While cooking the pasta, lightly whisk eggs and grated Parmesan cheese in a bowl. About 1 minute before the pasta is cooked, ladle half a scoop of pasta water to temper the egg mixture, immediately whisk again to combine.
- As soon as the spaghetti is cooked, add drained hot pasta to the pan with bacon. Pour in the egg mixture. Stir through quickly and vigorously to coat everything together, using the heat of the freshly cooked pasta to cook the eggs. Add pasta water (a tbsp at a time) if the pasta is too dry. Season to taste with freshly cracked black pepper and salt (only if needed).
- Serve with more grated parmesan cheese and chopped parsley.