Pasta. Cream. Bacon.
Cream?
Hi, guys! We're gonna make spaghetti carbonara,
a classic Italian dish pasta.
Cheese, bacon. What's not to love, right?
But it's really controversial.
I want to give you what I think is the most authentic recipe.
So first up guys, you only need five ingredients.
Guanciale.
This is the cured cheek of pork,
and as you can see, it's all about the fat.
It's salted, it's got pepper, it's dried, and it's aged.
Of course, it's similar to smoked bacon,
and you can get some pretty good results, actually,
but you can see this is quite lean,
so try and get them to not cut off the fat because you need it.
Or, there's pancetta.
Then most people use parmesan,
but actually, the more classic is pecorino romano.
Sheep's cheese, it's crumbly, it's salty.
Free-range, organic egg,
pasta,
black pepper,
and then, optional, garlic.
So first up guys, grab the pasta by two hands,
twist it, into the water.
By twisting it, it won't stick together.
Put a tiny amount of salt in this water
because the cheese and the guanciale is salty.
This beautiful pasta takes eight minutes to cook.
So I've got my guanciale.
I'm gonna remove the skin and I'm gonna take a nice centimeter slice
of the guanciale, roughly chop this
to about half centimeter chunks.
Now, the pan is cold.
Turn it on to a medium high heat.
The reason I want it cold is because I want to render the fat out.
The guanciale goes in to the pan,
and this pan is getting hot.
Give the garlic a crack, and then put it in the pan.
As this starts to sizzle, the fat will just pull out some of that perfume from the garlic.
Then there's the black pepper.
Get your peppercorns in a pestle and mortar.
Crack it.
Get a little sieve.
This is one of the most important little bits
and no one really does it, okay? Honestly.
This is the outer skin. This is much milder.
What we have here is the inside part of the peppercorn, which is hotter,
perfect for a good, hot carbonara.
The guanciale is getting golden.
Now, let's get on to the eggs.
Eggs are really, really delicate,
and if you don't treat these right,
you end up with stir-fried noodles,
and we don't want that.
I'm going to take a bowl,
and I'm going to crack the egg straight into there,
and I'm just going to add a little pecorino to that,
to like 20 grams.
Now, we're time-sensitive, so we're going to have a little whisk up.
We've got dark guanciale.
You've got the fat that's come out of it,
and that's what you want.
You want attitude and colors.
Now, I'm going to remove that garlic,
turn the heat off,
and you're going to drag the pasta and the water into the pan.
Use the water to stop the frying.
A bit fo water! A bit of water!
That water and the fat, that's what's gonna emulsify to become a creamy sauce.
We're not frying anymore, can you hear that?
Quiet; no frying at all.
Only then, can we think about adding our egg.
As we toss, we add some more liquid.
Ha-ha!
That's the cream.
You get the cream through the emulsification of the cooking water, and the fat,
and technique,
and timing.
So as simple as this is, it's technical.
Get your friends, your family, get them around the table, glass of wine,
Look at that, guys, look at that!
Carbonara!
And you finish with more pepper.
Wow!
I'm so excited.
Spaghetti carbonara with a beautiful, little finishing of pecorino.
That is as classic as I can give you guys.
From chefs, from nonnas, it's about quality ingredients,
the guanciale, the pecorino romano,
quality eggs,
the pepper — the technique of the pepper,
a good pasta,
and then the sensitivity of cooking it right.
Come on.
There's a little platter for two people,
and of course, the most important thing,
when you eat pasta is don't watch it, eat it!
Mmmm.
That, my friends, is a thing of joy.