Recipe Thread!

[Tom]

First of the hopefully many recipes from my side which I'd love to share
Take note that I'm usually not being too exact with all the measurements, amounts that start with ~ are usually more like rough guidelines. Just take a little more or less if you like so. Whatever suits your gusto

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Today's dish: Spaghetti Carbonara
I did it the traditional italian way (more or less), therefore you can serve this to your italian friends without having them complaining too much about how you're doing it wrong

Here you can find some pictures: https://freeimage.host/a/spaghetti-carbonara.Jw6oG

Ingredients:

• ~ 125g Spaghetti
• Salt
• A good handful of grated pecorino cheese (parmesan is fine too)
• ~ 60g Guanciale (pork cheek) (use Pancetta, or just regular bacon, like I did, if you can't find those or it's too expensive)
• A bit of Olive oil (only if you use regular bacon)
• 2 - 3 Egg yolks
  
• Grounded black pepper
• A little more grated cheese

Cooking:
- Take the eggs and the cheese out of the fridge in advance. It should be at room temperature for best results.
- Start boiling the water for the pasta in a big enough pot.
- In the meantime, chop the pork into somewhat bigger pieces and start heating up a frying pan (big enough to hold the spaghetti as well).
- In a separate bowl, mix the cheese and egg yolks until the mixture is somewhat smooth and as evenly as possible.
- When the water is boiling, add salt and spaghetti. Cook it until it's not quite al-dente yet (2 - 3 minutes less than the package says).
- Fry the bacon. If you use guanciale/pancetta, there should be no need for oil, as it should lose much more fat during the frying than regular bacon.
- When the spaghetti are ready, add them to the pan and keep some of the pasta water.
- Add a good spoon of the water to the egg-cheese-mix and to the pan as well.
- Reduce the heat on the pan (or even turn the stove off), then add the egg-cheese-mix to the pasta and mix well.

This Is the difficult part, took me a few tries to get it right! The egg shouldn't be cooked, but the cheese should be sort of melted in that step, therefore you need to time things right and find the right temperature.
I usually put the pan aside, wait a a little and then test with a little bit of the mix, before putting in the rest.
Your goal is to get a smooth and creamy sauce, like in picture 1. Don't hesitate to add more pasta water if the sauce is not creamy enough yet.
Also, you probably don't need to add more salt, pasta water and cheese should have enough, but better double check to be safe.

- Put on a plate, add some more cheese and a good portion of (not too finely) grounded black pepper.
- Serve and enjoy!


That's pretty much it. Not too simple but still not way too hard to do. Just a few ingredients and you get a very delicious dish!
And seriousely (I can't stress this enough): don't add cream to the sauce if any italians are around. They might be coming after you!

Sources: Various youtube videos from italian chefs (e.g. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dsg5H2TEQXs). Sort of extracted my own recipe out of them.