This post is about a year late (sorry). Ever since our trip to Italy last summer I have been wanting to make the perfect carbonara at home. I had it once in Rome, at a little restaurant that really catered more to tourists than it did to actual Romans I think, but it was still perfection (no matter where we ate, I never had a bad pasta dish in Rome). I’ve made carbonara plenty of times in the past 15 months, but it took me a while to find the right recipe, and then longer to perfect it to how I liked it (and make the portion perfect for the two of us, since it’s hard to split a recipe in half that calls for 5 eggs). And then I was terrible about writing down what I had done in the kitchen (how many eggs? how much bacon?), and so just now, in the past month, have I finally felt like I’ve been making a consistent carbonara in my kitchen.
My only real complaint is that I have to make this with bacon instead of guanciale. I know. That makes me sound like a food snob, and I’m sorry. But I’ve had dreams, like literal in the middle of the night dreams, of finding guanciale at my local grocery store and I cannot even tell you how disappointed I am when I wake up from that.
I saw some pork cheek at the grocery store a couple of weeks ago, and I’m seriously considering making some guanciale at home. (I’ll let you know how that goes if I make that decision, although I’m not sure how I’d be able to squeeze that in to life right now).
But even with just plain old bacon, this is delicious. And I was surprised at how easy carbonara was to make. It really only takes about half an hour, which is within my time-limit for dinners right now, so it has become one of our regular quick weeknight pasta dishes.
And because I need to be reminded, and I think you could perhaps use this, too, here are a few more of our favorite quick pasta dishes:
– mushroom marsala pasta
– pasta with sausage and tuscan beans
– roasted red pepper pasta
– spaghetti with garlic and olive oil
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This looks yummy and easy! We are huge bacon fans in our house (bacon and pineapple pizza is one of our regular dishes). Definitely trying this. And even though we don’t have a little one taking up all our time, I also let things go for too long. I have a running list of blog posts I’ve meant to write for maybe a year and a half…
A good carbonara is just perfect but it’s something that I very rarely make at home. You’ve inspired me to try it again!