Spaghetti malfunction
May 16th, 2005For days now I’ve been trying to work out how to make spaghetti carbonara, like you get it in the restaurant - i.e. a thick, delicious, creamy sauce of egg, cream and parmesan, coating lovely nice bacon and spaghetti. Mmm. Sounds simple - and the recipes out there don’t sound that hard. And I pride myself on being a reasonably decent cook.
But after my sixth attempt at it tonight, it has once again ended up being quite runny and horrible, and after eating it I felt slightly queasy at the thought I might be eating raw egg. Actually that might be the thought that I might not be as good a cook as I thought. Either way, I don’t seem to be very good at making what is quite a simple dish. I’ve tried warming the cream/egg mixture before I pour it into the pan (made no difference), varying the egg/cream ratio (which just turned it into scrambled eggs), whipping the cream beforehand (that just went horribly wrong) - no success. So…has anyone out there got a foolproof way of cooking it? Please? Before I go mad?
Trivia: It’s called Spaghetti Carbonara, literally “Spaghetti in the Manner of the Coal Miner” as according to local folklore, it was a favourite of Italian coal miners
May 16th, 2005 at 23:36:57
I’ve never managed to get this to come out to restaurant standards either, but the closest I’ve got is: Combine beaten egg with a lot of grated parmesan and a bare minimum of milk (or cream if you’re feeling posh), and stir quickly into just-drained and hot pasta (the cheat’s way to ensure this is to do it on a low heat). The egg should cook on impact, and the parmesan and milk should keep the texture creamy (or at least gungy) instead of scrambled-egg-like. I think the bacon should be added afterwards - I used to fry the bacon in another saucepan & tip the pasta into that pan before adding the egg, but I think that gives the pasta too much of a chance to get cold.
Didn’t know about the miners. Men with taste, obviously.
May 17th, 2005 at 00:07:49
I’m with him. Although (perhaps controversially) I dispense with cream in favour of heaps of garlic, on a Woosterish notion that a bit of raw egg can be quite a good pickmeup. Or somesuch.
May 17th, 2005 at 00:22:13
It only takes a few minutes to cook an egg through so, seriously, that’s unlikely to be a problem. You can do the quick fix by using a minimum of liquid, which will probably work fairly well. But I wonder if you might not be giving the mixture enough time. How long are you letting it cook? You need to let it reduce fairly slowly to get the thick & sticky effect. (The BBC recipe seems to suggest you should have it on the go *before* putting the spaghetti on.)
And now you’ve got me thinking that it’s far far too long since I’ve had carbonara…
May 17th, 2005 at 06:25:37
I have had carabobara by both the beatriz and Azz and it was lovely. My son tried make some on Friday using Good Housekeeping recipe, it tasted ok but was grainy as he had not taken it off the heat to add the egg, and owing to their inclusion of tomatoes - pink.
May 17th, 2005 at 10:24:33
From the lady herself: Delia….
Spaghetti alla Carbonara
This is my favourite, and the very best version I know of the great classic Italian recipe for pasta with bacon and egg sauce. I used to make it with English bacon and Parmesan cheese, but now we are able to get Italian pancetta and Pecorino Romano cheese, it is a great improvement.
Serves 2
8 oz (225 g) dried spaghetti
5 oz (150 g) smoked pancetta, cubed or sliced
2 large eggs, plus 2 extra yolks
11⁄2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
4 tablespoons Pecorino Romano, finely grated, plus extra to serve
4 tablespoons double cream
freshly milled black pepper
* Click on an ingredient to find out more
First of all, cook the pasta. Meanwhile, heat the olive oil in a frying pan and fry the pancetta until it’s crisp and golden, about 5 minutes. Next, whisk the eggs, yolks, cheese and cream in a bowl and season generously with black pepper.
Then, when the pasta is cooked, drain it quickly in a colander, leaving a little of the moisture still clinging. Now quickly return it to the saucepan and add the pancetta and any oil in the pan, along with the egg and cream mixture. Stir very thoroughly, so that everything gets a good coating – what happens is that the liquid egg cooks briefly as it comes into contact with the hot pasta. Serve the pasta on really hot deep plates with some extra grated Pecorino.
This recipe is taken from The Delia Collection: Italian.
Click here to buy the book for just £6.99
May 17th, 2005 at 11:00:49
Thanks, Ros (and Delia). I bet the extra egg yolks make a big difference.
May 17th, 2005 at 11:35:30
The method I use just uses egg yolks and parmesan and dispensing with the rest of the egg and cream. Basically, fry garlic, add bacon, add some white wine and reduce a lot. Mix parmesan and egg yolks and add black pepper etc. - this should have the consistency of a paste. Cook and drain pasta, add bacon, add egg mix and stir until cooked.
I’m not sure exactly how traditional this is, and I have never had carbonara in a restaurant, but it seems to taste good to me. I think the key thing is to use the sauce sparingly, so that it cooks quickly and doesn’t cool down the pasta too much.
May 18th, 2005 at 08:43:09
For me, the recipe that produces results closest to how I imagine Carbonara should taste is in Nigella Lawson’s “How to Eat” book. Lots of other good stuff in there, too.
May 18th, 2005 at 10:01:54
This may sound controversial, but I tend to use white sauce as a base for carbonara. That way you can get a reasonable gloopyness and add eggs, herbs and other good things accordingly. But that’s a bit of a cheat.
May 18th, 2005 at 21:35:06
Concur utterly with Adrian. Nigella’s your girl. Hers also has the calorifically serendipidous side effect of dispensing with the cream. Anyhow what’s the matter with raw egg? With what else might one garnish steak tartare or make a prairie oyster? Coward.
May 19th, 2005 at 09:21:59
Nigella’s also quite fit
May 19th, 2005 at 10:14:04
Agreed - well, fitter than Delia. Several people are, you’d be amazed.
May 19th, 2005 at 12:05:31
Craving a carbonara - heading home to consult Nigella.
May 19th, 2005 at 12:55:46
Hi, I pride myself of being able to cook a perfect carbonara.
For years I had mixed cream and eggs, but that is not necessary.
That’s a thing to prevent the egg cooking too much.
But if you get the timing right you don’t need to add any cream and you’ll produce a much better carbonara.
So, here’s my recipy:
Put the spaghetti to cook in salted boiling water.
Mix one large egg per portion, salt, pepper and nutmeg and whip it thoroughly and have it near you when you drain the pasta.
Put some pancetta or bacon to fry in butter.
Drain the spaghetti when cooked.
Then, once drained count 5 very slowly and you pour it into the egg.
Add the bacon or pancetta on top and some greated parmisan.
Sprinkle with chopped flat parsley.
If the time you allowed the spaghetti to cool down is right, you’ll have the perfect carbonara, if you wait too long it’ll be too runny, if you don’t wait enough it’ll be dry.
It’s not easy, you might get it wrong few times before you get a dish that is just right.
This timing advise is valid for one serving.
If you are cooking for more people, you have to wait longer as more spaghetti take longer to cool down that bit.
May 19th, 2005 at 13:02:27
So, dinner at yours then….
May 19th, 2005 at 13:51:39
One theory widely accepted in Italy (where I come from) put the origin of the popularity of the spaghetti carbonara at the time of the Anglo-american occupation of Italy in 1944.
The very anglosaxon bacon and eggs, that the troups were fed, mixed with spaghetti and produced the dish.
So, it’s not unhortodox to use bacon instead of pancetta.
May 20th, 2005 at 11:56:52
Off the carbonara track, an Italian former house-mate of mine showed me a very easy and lovely recipe which doesn’t involve any faffing around with eggs.
Fry pancetta/bacon bits. Add single cream and peas. Put tagliatelle on to boil. Simmer cream, meat, peas for ten minutes while pasta boils, or longer if you think it needs it. Meanwhile season as wished (loads of black pepper, I think.) Drain pasta when done (obviously) and mix the whole lot together. Sounds dull but is actually fantastically nice. Apparently in Italy this is known as the three Ps, for Pancetta, Panna and, er, whatever the Italian for peas is. (You can use sour cream - it tastes nice - but it will curdle and look unappealing.)
Pax et bonum!
May 20th, 2005 at 23:09:05
Carbonara without eggs? I can make pasta with bacon in creamy sauce (actually creme fraiche usually rather than cream) and it’s great, but I’m not going to call it carbonara. The faffing with eggs is the point, for chrissakes.
May 23rd, 2005 at 11:05:18
I’m not pretending it’s carbonara! But it is very nice.