Hey, what's up guys, and welcome back to Binging with Babish.
For this week we are celebrating the return of Master of None.
With, one of my favorites, Carbonara.
A recipe that begins, and ends, with eggs.
We're going to start by measuring 7 ounces each of all purpose flour and semolina flour
You can just use all purpose if you want, but semolina gives the pasta a nice color and texture.
Next up we're going to break four eggs into the center
of a well that we create in the middle of our flour mixture.
We're going to beat those eggs with a fork slowly, adding more and more of the flour mixture as we go along,
until we get a rough dough that we're going to turn out onto a clean work surface
and enthusiastically knead for about 5 minutes, or until we get a nice, cohesive, smooth, supple dough.
Wrap in plastic wrap and let it rest at room temperature for thirty (30) minutes
Before busting out your fancy new pasta extruder -
placing golf ball sized pieces of dough one at a time into the hopper.
Now if you don't have one of these things, an easy and less expensive way
to make spaghetti is with a pasta roller
but you can also do it by hand, rolling out a sheet of dough
and cutting it into strips, but sadly that's another episode
maybe when I do Master of None season 2.
Once we've got all of our pasta made and dusted liberally with flour,
it's time to mince up about 5 or 6 cloves of garlic
because we're doing two batches of Carbonara here,
One meat, and one vegetarian.
It looks like Dev was using Guanciale
which is the super OG way of making Carbonara
it's a cured pork jowl. If you can't find that, just use pancetta or even bacon if you like.
Fry that up until it's nice and crisp
and at the last few minutes of cooking,
Set a few nests of pasta in some boiling water for two minutes
and add 2 to 3 cloves of minced garlic to our sizzling meat.
Sauté for no more than one minute, kill the heat, and add the pasta.
Toss your pasta to nicely coat it in jowl grease
which is a new favorite phrase of mine
before beating together two eggs, and stirring constantly
adding to the pasta until creamy and evenly coated
and then, while the pasta is still hot, we're going to dump
a whole cup of freshly grated Parmesan into the fray.
Don't use any cream. There is no cream in real Carbonara.
Season with pepper and add salt if necessary -
Guanciale is usually pretty salty so you might not need it.
And using our favorite carving fork, I swear, I use this only for pasta
I've never carved anything with this fork
plate your noodles with some extra meat on top
and of course, a healthy grating of Parmesan cheese.
Now, at first I thought the pasta press was a waste of money,
but it produces really dense chewy noodles which I love.
But what if you want Carbonara without the meat?
Well, we need to use some meaty smoky umami flavors.
Let's start with a few sliced shiitake mushrooms
that we're going to sauté until crisp in a few tablespoons of olive oil
these are our pancetta proxy, our swine substitute
our pretend pig, I got a million of them.
Add garlic in the last few minutes of cooking, just as before
sautéing until fragrant, adding the pasta with a bit of pasta water
you want to make sure to add a little bit of pasta water with both of these versions
it helps thicken the sauce in the end
we're still adding eggs and cheese, because Dev specified this is a vegetarian version
not a vegan version. I have no idea how you would do a vegan version.
But to try and stand in for the smokiness of the bacon
we're going to, this time, use a half cup each of smoked provolone and Parmesan.
Plate it up all fancy, extra mushrooms on top, and the requisite freshly grated Parmesan
Now a really great Carbonara is a something very special
So is a vegetarian version up to the task?
Well, to give you an idea to how good this was,
I still cleaned my plate despite this being my second bowl of Carbonara
in the span of 1 hour. It also ended up costing me a lot of money
because I went out and got a gym membership afterwards
I wish I was kidding. I'm not.