Spaghetti alla carbonara
This recipe began in the pages of Giuliano Hazan's The Classic Pasta Cookbook (Dorling Kindersley, 1993), one of those super DK cookbooks with oodles of helpful photographs. (You can still get it from Amazon's Marketplace.) Spaghetti alla carbonara is one of the Classic Sauces, which puts it in a special chapter where every ingredient is pictured in an arc around a bowl containing the finished product. (Other classics are Pasta puttanesca, Pasta primavera, Fettuccine all'Alfredo, and, most important, a recipe for the Bolognese sauce known as ragù.) You don't really have to know how to read to use this cookbook.
That cookbook. This is my cookbook. I strongly advise you to read what follows all the way through before even thinking of making the dish. It's not that carbonara is in any way difficult. It's simply that I want you to savor my prose in tranquility.
Continue reading about the Spaghetti alla carbonara at Portico.
Comments
I've made a decision: to let you do all the cooking!!!!
Posted by: PPOQ | February 24, 2005 07:21 AM
But can you core a apple?
Posted by: PPOQ | February 24, 2005 08:18 AM
All right, Granpépé, what's the joke I'm missing here? Or course I can core an apple. Or is Cora Apple somebody I should know?
Posted by: R J Keefe | February 24, 2005 08:41 AM
Honestly, BlagueMaster, you SHOULD know that this is a classic line from one of the greatest of all the original Honeymooners half-hours, when Ralph and Ed try to sell a kitchen implement on tv.
And they do try to 'core A apple.' It is, of course, a disaster.
Posted by: PPOQ | February 24, 2005 09:50 AM
Oh dear. Every time I hear the words "Spaghetti alla carbonara" I cringe in fear. Don't get me wrong, I'm sure yours will taste heavenly. It's just that I once had such a horrific experience with that dish, that I have never eaten it since. I ate it at some fancy restaurant, while dining with my then boyfriend. Afterwards, we went to hear Beethoven's 9th Symphony, at Roy Thompson Hall in Toronto. Somewhere around the end of the 2nd movement, things started going dangerously wrong with my innards. And there were no breaks between the movements! I didn't have the nerve to try and sneak out, so I suffered in agonizing and terrifying silence. As Beethoven raged, so did I. I said many prayers to myself during that symphony that night, including begging the orchestra to please just get that damn 'Ode to Joy' over and done with. Such a shame, because I love the 9th.
That was over 20 years ago. Still can't touch Spaghetti alla carbonara, but at least I no longer cringe when I listen to lovely, lovely Ludwig Van.
Posted by: patricia | February 24, 2005 11:27 AM
Quelle horreur, Patricia! I can think of many things that might go wrong with carbonara, actually - although not in my kitchen, of course. Thank goodness there are still plenty of other pasta greats for you to enjoy. I'm glad, in any case, that your agony remained how you say self-contained.
I didn't know that there was a Cora Apple character in The Honeymooners.
Posted by: R J Keefe | February 24, 2005 11:38 AM