(Lima) Beans and Delhi Cha(a)t

Carbonara Spaghetti

All right, pasta lovers!

Since I received kudos on my previous post I decided to make December pasta month and thus will bring a different recipe every week. I hope you enjoyed pesto sauce, one of my personal favorites. This time I bring one even easier to make, a treat for those who want a little meat on their plate.

The star of today's show is bacon. Yup, those crispy strips we love to have on Sunday morning. The secret of this sauce is that you don't need oil. The sauce uses the natural grease which the bacon releases when heated up.



So without further delay... grab your cook hat and "I'm Tryin'" apron and let's get busy...

Spaghetti with Carbonara Sauce

Ingredients

1/2 kg. Spaghetti
150 gr Bacon strips (raw)
3 cloves of garlic
1/3 cup chopped onion (chopped really tiny)
1/2 white wine
2/3 cup cream (we call it milk cream or sour cream)
1/2 cup grated parmesan cheese
1/4 tsp. black pepper
2 eggs
1 dash nutmeg


Preparation:

Put the bacon in a cold skillet, along with garlic (the cloves should be whole, not chopped) and onion. Remember you won't need oil. Heat up until it turns brownish then remove the cloves with a fork.

Separately, mix in a bowl eggs, milk cream and pepper. Pour this mix in the skillet and add the wine. Stir a bit till it turns creamy.

The tricky part is to calculate your time so that both your spaghetti and the sauce are ready approximately at the same time. The next step is simply to join the spaghetti and the sauce, use two forks to mix them well. And that's it!! Add nutmeg and serve with lots of parmesan cheese.


A brief word on spaghetti:

Some of our foreign friends have asked me about preparing the spaghetti itself. The process is very simple. Boil 4-6 cups of water (with about a teaspoon of salt). Once the water is boiling put the spaghetti in the pot. DO NOT BREAK THEM. As they heat up they will bend. Help them with a kitchen fork by stirring slowly. Make sure your water is boiling all the time. Sometimes when you add the spaghetti, the water stops bubbling. Raise the temperature a bit, and then lower it once you get it boiling again. You should cook the spaghetti at medium temperature average. Depending on how cooked yo want your spaghetti, this takes place in 9-11 minutes. Most people prefer "al dente". Thsi means, that point where the pasta is not raw anymore but still has a nice hard contexture. Once the time is passed, rinse to get rid of the water. Voilá!

And a tip. If some spaghetti is leftover (better if it hasn't been mixed with sauce) you can later boil some water and drop in this prepared pasta for 5 minutes. It will taste as freshly made.

Enjoy and tell us about it :)

Cesar

posted by cesarcarlos at 9:27 PM