- So this week, we have America's favorite newlywed couple,
Lauren and Cameron from Love is Blind.
Antoni: Hi, guys!
- Hi! - Hey!
- Cameron, I love the way that you just gave like
a nice little glance to Lauren, it was really adorable.
You guys are really in love!
- Oh, yeah. - We are!
- Knowing that Lauren loves pasta
and that they have a tradition of
a cute little date night that they do together,
I have the perfect, decadent
date night pasta dish for them.
I'm Antoni and this is Show Me What You're Working With,
where you show me what you have
and I make you a dish.
- Hey! - Hi!
How are you? - How you doing?
- Really good.
I know I'm supposed to cook for you and everything,
but I just really, I'm curious,
as soon as the show came out,
did you think it was gonna be as big a deal as it was?
Be 100% honest.
- Well, for us, I feel like you always
hope that the show's gonna do well,
but we had no idea that it would be
this kind of global phenomemon that is was.
- Yeah. - Which is,
I mean, it blows our mind.
- I think we knew that some people would at least
take something away from our story.
- Well, you guys have an earnestness to you
and I think that's what people really respond to, right?
'Cause we all want that in our own relationships,
like you. - Yeah.
- So, who cooks in the relationship?
- That would be me.
- Yeah, he's a great cook and
he makes a lot of stuff from scratch and stuff like that,
so I'm a lucky gal. (laughs)
- Very lucky, you're both very lucky.
- Yeah, absolutely. - Thank you.
- Okay, so can you give me a quick little tour
of your pantry and your fridge?
I just wanna see what you guys have,
what you're working with.
- Yeah, yeah, yeah,
let's do it. - Let's do it.
- [Lauren] Some ground turkey down there,
fruits and vegetables.
Whole lot of sauces and things.
- Do you make sauces from scratch or
if you're making some kind of a dish,
do you use ready-made sauces?
- Definitely from scratch.
I think with sauces,
you especially wanna know what's going into it.
- Yeah. - Yeah.
- Is there a package in one of the drawers of bacon?
- Yes. - Yes.
- Regular pork bacon?
- We love pasta, this is a pasta house.
- What kind of pasta do you have?
- [Cameron] We've got angel hair, rotini.
- [Lauren] Mm-hmm.
- [Cameron] Fusilli.
Spaghetti. - Spaghetti.
- Nice, do you guys have eggs?
- We do have some eggs. - We do.
- What kind of pepper do you have?
- Cracked black pepper.
- Yes! Okay!
Have you ever had pasta carbonara?
- Ooh!
I don't think so. - I haven't.
- It's like heaven.
- I'm excited about this new,
yeah, this recipe.
Thank you.
- All right, bye Lauren! Bye Cameron!
- Bye! - All right, thank you.
- Looks like we're making pasta carbonara.
I'm super excited to make pasta carbonara
because it's one of my very favorite dishes.
Why?
Because it's extremely easy to make.
All it involves is a little bit of technique,
because what you don't want is scrambled eggs with pasta.
You want a nice, creamy, rich,
velvety, cheesy, eggy sauce.
So, let's get started.
You need pasta.
I'm using chickpea spaghetti
but you can use regular spaghetti,
bucatini, bow tie, penne, whatever you got.
Fresh eggs.
Do they have to be fancy, farm-fresh eggs like mine?
No, they don't, but these are certainly cute.
Parmigiano-Reggiano,
Pecorino Romano if you have it,
or a mix of both is even better.
Fresh cracked pepper, so important to this recipe.
I'm using pancetta, but guanciale is really good,
or regular bacon will do just fine.
So, this is the type of dish
that comes together within, like, 15 to 17 minutes,
so you gotta be on your toes!
You're gonna be moving from your stove to your prep area
and back and forth.
So, we have a piece of pancetta.
I'm using about a third of the pancetta that I have,
I'm gonna cut it up into little cubes.
If you're using bacon, you wanna use six to eight slices
cut into about one-inch pieces
and don't trim any of the fat
because this is something that's gonna flavor the sauce
and all the fat's gonna render,
it's gonna kind of melt out as it cooks
and try to get them all the same size
so that they cook evenly.
So, I'm gonna take this over to the pan.
So, we're gonna put our pancetta
into a medium-size pan on medium heat.
There's plenty of fat in this,
so you don't have to add any olive oil.
Spread 'em apart.
Let's go make the egg mix.
So, the sauce for carbonara is super simple,
it's all egg-based.
Basically, you just wanna get a medium-size mixing bowl.
For the eggs, I basically go on a one-to-one ratio,
so for every egg that you use,
you wanna add an additional yolk.
So, one egg, one egg yolk.
Two eggs, two egg yolks.
You get the drift.
To separate it, I'm actually gonna take the whites
and leave them in a bowl.
You don't have to waste these,
you can use these for an omelet or a frittata
or a meringue if you want.
So, I have two yolks in here
and now we're gonna take two whole eggs.
Perfect.
Actually, we can...
Thank you.
Like, a polite way of saying "Please leave." (laughs)
- [Kevin] Out of the way egg boy!
- I got lucky and I didn't get any shells in the bowl.
You don't wanna be crunching on any egg shells
when you're enjoying a creamy, velvety carbonara.
I'm gonna check on my pork.
So, I'm getting a nice little pork facial right now.
You wanna crisp these little bits up
until they're nice and golden
and all of the fat is rendered.
So, these need a couple more minutes.
So, we have two egg yolks and two eggs
and then we're gonna put in about two thirds cup
packed grated Parmigiano-Reggiano,
Pecorino Romano if you have it.
I only have parm, so that's what I'm using.
When you're grating cheese,
you wanna use the smallest hole that you have
because it's gonna melt a lot easier.
Don't use the large hole,
'cause it's gonna be a lot harder to melt.
And also, you should buy your cheese in blocks like this
because it's less expensive.
Fresh cracked pepper is super important.
I'm gonna put a shit ton in.
And now I'm gonna whisk it all up
into an eggy, cheesy, peppery slurry.
Whisky, whisky, whisky.
And then you have this beautiful, golden mixture.
And we are back at the stove.
So, now we wanna take the pancetta
out of the pan with a spatula, put it into a bowl,
'cause it doesn't need to cook any more
and you wanna make sure to
leave that awesome pork fat in your pan,
'cause it's gonna flavor our sauce.
Crunchy and delicious and very hot. (laughs)
Okay, we're going back to the prep.
So, our pancetta's ready,
our pan is nice and hot, filled with that pork fat,
our sauce is ready,
now we gotta cook the pasta.
So I'm gonna put this in a medium pot
of heavily salted water.
It is super important to
salt the hell out of your pasta water,
you basically want it to taste like
the boiling ocean, if that makes sense,
because that's gonna not only flavor your pasta,
but then we're gonna be using that water
to flavor our sauce.
And you wanna push it all in
so that your pasta cooks evenly.
And that's gonna take about six or seven minutes.
Check the instructions on your pasta,
you wanna cook it al dente,
so that it still has a bit of a bite.
So, for this, I'm using a medium-size pot.
You don't wanna go too small
because you're gonna overcrowd your pan
and then you don't wanna go too big,
because then your water isn't gonna be as starchy.
Why?
You want your water to be super starchy,
because that's gonna help thicken the sauce,
which we're gonna use to add to the eggs afterwards.
(rock music)
So, while I wait for the pasta to cook,
let's go to Happy Hour!
(dramatic jazz music)
(dog barks)
Welcome to Happy Hour! - Welcome to Happy Hour.
As a Love is Blind super-fan, I found myself
asking a shocking amount of questions each episode.
So I hijacked Ant's call with Lauren and Cameron
to ask the burning questions that keep me up at night.
So, my first question.
Which moment were you more shocked by:
When Diamond quoted Beyonce during her fight
(Lauren laughs) or
when Jessica fed her dog wine?
- Ooh! - Oh, definitely the wine.
- I think I gotta go with the wine, 'cause I was just like,
"Did that just happen?" Like, what? (laughs)
- Are there any similarities between
pod life and quarantine life?
- It's a much more focused state of mind, I think.
- [Lauren] Quarantine is very much like pod life,
yeah, for sure.
- Cameron, is it a trigger or a turn-on
when Lauren calls at you from another room now?
- I think it's a turn-on because
we first connected on just our voices so,
when you're focusing on that, it kind of takes you back.
- Are you ever worried about Lauren
meeting one of your neighbors through the walls?
- Uh, no, not at all. (Lauren laughs)
(laughing)
- Would you guys have any advice
for people trying to find love at a distance
right now during quarantine?
- Be honest with yourself,
think about the type of questions
you want to ask a potential partner.
- Conversation is everything,
I mean, that's pretty much all that we have right now.
It's a good time to just get to know someone
through talking. - Yep.
- Thank you (Lauren laughs)
so much, this was really awesome.
- Oh, thank you! - Yeah, thank you for caring.
- Was it all that you'd hoped for?
- It was like being inside one of the pods.
(Antoni laughs) That was
everything I could've asked for and more,
that was my Super Bowl.
Thank you for letting me hijack that.
- Back to cooking.
Okay, so the pasta's been cooking for six to seven minutes,
I'm gonna try it out.
It's not not hot.
Perfect.
So now, this part's gonna move quickly,
so you really have to pay attention.
You wanna reserve some of your pasta water,
'cause this stuff is super important
and you wanna strain the rest.
We're getting another facial!
A pasta facial this time, it's a self-care day.
So, if you're using regular pasta,
you don't wanna rinse it.
If you're using any type of a pasta alternative like I am,
because I'm using chickpea pasta,
you wanna rinse it because otherwise,
it's gonna be really gummy and sticky.
Perfect.
Now, we're gonna take our pasta water and back to the board.
So, into our egg mixture, where we have our parm,
our pepper and our eggs that we've all whisked together,
we're gonna slowly but surely
add a little bit of pasta water,
because we wanna temper the sauce
so that the eggs slowly start to cook
so when we add 'em to the pan,
they don't turn into scrambled eggs.
This is the most important part of this recipe.
So while you're whisking,
and this is hard because I'm not ambidextrous, (laughs)
you add a little bit of hot pasta water
and you mix it in.
I've added about four of these
and they're about a quarter of a cup each.
So, we have our nice, little eggy mix here
and we're ready to assemble everything.
Going back to the stove.
All right, so it's all coming together,
this is the last, most important step.
So, we have a pan with the pork fat,
it's set on medium-low heat.
Into the pan, I'm gonna put in the pasta
and you wanna mix it around a little bit
so that it absorbs all that really nice pork fat
and then we take our pancetta, put that in
and you wanna just mix these around a little.
I'm gonna slowly pour in our mixture
and you wanna get every little bit in there
of pepper that's at the bottom as well.
And now you just wanna mix the pasta around.
So, the sauce has thickened up a little,
the pasta's absorbed some of it.
We're ready to plate!
So rich
And creamy!
This smells so good.
- [Kevin] Neon's frothing, though.
(Antoni laughs)
(upbeat music)
- Mm.
So good.
I know it feels very self-indulgent
to enjoy something that I just made myself,
but it's really damn good.
All right, Lauren and Cameron, it's your turn.
Make me proud.
- Kevin: We love you!
- So, we just finished making the pasta carbonara.
- Mm-hm, it smells so good.
- Yeah, it was a lot of fun to make.
- Mmm.
- Here we go, moment of truth.
- Here we go.
- You like it? - It's really good.
- Ooh, baby, we got the bacon in there.
We got the eggs, you know,
it's kind of cool to make
a cream sauce from egg.
Thank you so much, Antoni.
We really appreciate you
coming into the kitchen and helping out.
And we'll see you soon. - Bye, guys!
Thank you!
- So, I want you to show me what you're working with.
Send me your video submissions
and tell me a little bit about yourself.
Who are you?
Where are you located?
Who are you quarantining with?
What's in your fridge?
Any wildcard ingredients that you
really don't know what to do with?
I wanna cook for you.
If you're in a position to help,
Feeding America's doing amazing work
to get food to people who really need it right now,
so you can donate, if you can,
to feedingamerica.org/antonicooks.