Fettucini Carbonara

I can't exactly tell you why I had been wanting to make a hearty Carbonara lately.  Maybe I have been oogling one too many pictures of cured meat (porn) lately.  Maybe I'm just carb-deprived.  Either way, Ngoc deserves a silver star putting up with my eagerness all weekend.

This is a laughingly easy and quick dish to make.  This recipe is a hybrid of the time-tested (read:outdated) entry in my Better Homes manual, and a popular entry on AllRecipes.com.  Not wanting it to be so eggy, and craving a healthy dose of fromaaaage, I added a couple tweaks.


Fettucini Carbonara

8 oz. dry fettucini

1/2 cup cream or half & half

3/4 cup grated parmesan cheese

1 shallot, diced

1/4 yellow onion, diced

2 cloves garlic, dices

2 bacon-thick slices pancetta (2-3 oz.) dices

1 tbsp. butter

2 egg yolks

3 tsp. olive oil

1 tsp. freshly ground pepper

Bring a pot of water to boil and toss in fettucini to cook.  In the meantime, dice shallots, onion, garlic, and pancetta.  Once the fettucini is cooked, remove from pot and replace with olive oil.  Once oil it heated, add onions, shallots, and garlic, stirring until translucent.  Add pancetta, stirring occasionally.

In a bowl, whisk together egg yolks and cream until evenly mixed.  In a separate pan, melt butter.  While butter is melting, add pasta back into the pot and mix with garlic, shallots, pancetta, and onion until pasta is well oiled.  Reduce heat to pasta pot, but do not extinguish heat entirely.

Add cream and yolk mixture to butter and whisk thoroughly until mixture is heated evenly.  Do not stop whisking or else egg will solidify.  After 1 - 2 minutes whisking yolk/butter/cream mixture, pour over pasta.  Add parmesan cheese and mix well until cheese is melted.  Serve immediately with freshly ground pepper.

Notes: the end product was dangerously yummy, but if i had to do it again, I would try to reduce the saltiness.  I think the amount of pancetta used in the recipe is definitely more than enough to flavor the entire dish....Also, parmesan cheese might be reduced to 1/2 cup for you cheese loathers out there.  Either of these two edits might help bring down the saltiness a notch or so.  This dish is not for the faint of heart, literally!  Make sure you do cardio beforehand, or else you'll regret that you didn't.