History

The name Spaghetti alla Carbonara means "Charcoal Makers Spaghetti" as the specks of black pepper sprinkled liberally over the final dish look like the ash from the charcoal makers craft. Or maybe its because this is a particularly filling dish, just perfect for keeping a charcoal maker sustained through the long hours of tending his kiln.

One way or another this is one of the fastest and most toothsome pasta dishes around. And an all time classic in the pantheon of Roman cooking.

Ingredients

To serve four people:

• 500g spaghetti
• 200g streaky bacon
• 5 eggs
• 100ml double cream
• 15ml olive oil
• 25g butter
• Black pepper
• Salt
• 50g Parmesan cheese
• 50g Pecorino Romano cheese

Preparation

Heat at least 4 litres of water in a large pan with 25g of salt and cook the spaghetti according to the instructions on the packet. Taking great care as always not to overcook the pasta.

Cut the bacon into matchstick width pieces. One trick to make the bacon easier to handle, is to lightly grill or fry the bacon first before cutting it.

In a large frying pan heat the butter and the olive oil, and fry the bacon pieces gently until the bacon fat becomes transparent. This should take about 4 or 5 minutes.

Whilst this bacon is cooking. In a separate bowl mix the double cream with two whole eggs and the yolk from the other three, to make a smooth eggy cream. Also grate the cheeses together and keep them to one side.

Once the bacon and the spaghetti are cooked, it is time to assemble the dish and this is where the fun begins.

Drain the pasta and add it to the pan with the bacon. Stir it well so that every strand of spaghetti is coated with the oil and it is mixed thoroughly with the bacon.

Add about half of the grated cheese and the eggy cream to the pan with the bacon and spaghetti and stir it vigorously. The idea is to coat each strand with the cream and to warm the cream through from the heat of the pasta.

Do not let it cook such that the eggs and cream turn out looking like scrambled eggs. This whole process should take no more than 30 seconds to complete. Any more than that and you risk overcooking the sauce.

Finally serve up the Spaghetti alla Carbonara, either into a serving dish or onto the diners plates, adding the remainder of the cheese and plenty of black pepper.

Variations upon a Theme

More or less everything in this recipe can be changed according ones personal tastes

• An alternative long pasta such as Linguine or Tagliatelle can be used just as successfully as Spaghetti.
• If you want to use a short pasta, reduce the amount of eggs and cream in the recipe. This is because there is less surface area on this type of pasta for the sauce to coat, and the final dish will have excess sauce if you don't.
• The traditional recipe calls for Guanciale which is Italian bacon cut from the pig's cheek. However this is nigh on impossible to find in the UK so good quality streaky bacon is the natural substitute.
• The bacon can be cut and fried in anyway you choose. Big pieces; little pieces; lightly cooked; dark and crunchy - it makes no real difference.
• The dish can be made wholly with Parmesan cheese instead of the Parmesan/Pecorino mix. It isn't advisable however to make it wholly with Pecorino as this is a particularly strong tasting cheese which will swamp the flavour of the bacon.
• Vegetarian alternatives, if this is your thing, are tricky. A partial solution is to substitute the bacon with small pieces of blanched asparagus. However there is no way around the fact that Parmesan cheese is made with animal rennet, and that the 'vegetarian parmesan' available is not, and tastes nothing like the real thing.
• There aren't really any low calorie substitutes for any of the ingredients, so this is not a dish for the weight conscious. Indeed with all that saturated fat in the ingredients, it is less a dish to be digested and more one that is laid directly onto the arteries!