Everyone Around the Table

Bacon. Onion. Garlic. Pinon nuts. Eggs. Pasta. Parmesan cheese. OMG, what a divine collection of wonderfulness! And they all combine together quickly and easily into my version of Pasta Carbonara which I’m going to share with you right now. Please note, this is a revised version of a previous recipe you’ve found here. This one is much-improved though so I wanted to make sure it was right here where you’re used to looking for the recipe.

Carbonara “Americana”:

The first version of pasta carbonara I ever made was with a recipe that, apparently, Tom Cruise made. He rattled off the how-to when he was a guest on Oprah. I made it for years for my family and loved it.

Then, we went to Venice where I ordered Carbonara in a restaurant run by a mom and pop place and, frankly, it wasn’t that great. It was creamy but didn’t have much flavor. I was disappointed.

Then, I saw the show “Pasta Queen” on Amazon Prime and one of the episodes was about essential Italian recipes, including Pasta Carbonara. The host, Nadia Caterina Munno, said you cannot use bacon and must use guanciale, which is pig jowl. So, my husband and I set about finding guanciale, determined to finally make Pasta Carbonara “right.”

We found some, followed Munno’s recipe to the letter and…didn’t like it. The smell of the guanciale as it was in the skillet rendering smelled funky, as opposed to how bacon smells which, swear to God, is good enough to dab behind each ear as perfume. I loved the creaminess, which my version lacked. But the overall flavor was just lacking. Right then and there, my husband and I decided that combining the two recipes could make a really awesome version and that we’d call it a Carbonara Americana version.

Carbonara “Americana” Recipe

Ingredients:

2-3 slices of bacon, cut into thin strips
¼ cup pinion nuts
1-2 cloves garlic, diced
1 ¼ cup finely shredded pecorino cheese
4 egg yolks and 1 full egg
1 lb. of pasta

Directions:

1. Get a big pot of water boiling and pour a good amount of salt in it (they say to make the water salty like the ocean).
2. In a skillet, add a little olive oil and heat it. Throw in the pinion nuts and stir. Stir it frequently to let the nuts brown – watch it carefully because they can go from just right to burnt in a second. Remove them from the pan and set aside in a small dish.
3. In that same pan, add the bacon and let it cook. Just about this time, the water should be boiling so throw in the pasta.
4. While both the pasta and bacon are cooking, mix the eggs into the bowl with the grated cheese and stir.
5. Temper the cheese and egg mixture by adding a spoonful (like a soup spoon size) of hot pasta water and stirring.
6. Remove the bacon from the pan, leaving the fat. Add a spoonful of the bacon fat to the egg and cheese mixture too, stirring.
7. Add a few cranks of ground pepper.
8. If the pasta is done (al dente), take the pasta out of the pan and put it directly in the skillet the bacon was cooked in. Stir it around a little.
9. Add the egg/cheese mixture to the pan and and ¼ cup of pasta water and stir. The consistency should be creamy. Toss in the bacon and pinion nuts and stir. Top with more cheese and black pepper if desired.

IF there’s any Pasta Carbonara left over (not likely, so better make extra), it’s delicious the next day (or two) for leftovers with just a drizzle of olive oil mixed in. Just sayin’.

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