Spaghetti Carbonara (Roman Style)

Preparation time: 20 minutes
Amount of cheese, and how finely you dice the pancetta, should be adjusted according to preference.

Ingredients (per person)

• 120g spaghetti
• one egg (one per person, plus an extra egg-yolk)
• handful of diced pancetta (or guanciale, if available)
• heaped tablespoon of grated parmesan or pecorino

Method

Spaghetti Carbonara is an easy to make dish.
First, get the spaghetti boiling in plenty of salted water, i recommend 10g per litre water. Next, fry the pancetta in a good dash of olive oil. Beat the eggs and the extra yolk together in a bowl.

When the pasta is cooked, drain it but put a bowl under the colander in order to retain some of the water; you may need that later.

Now return the pasta to the pan, and stir in first the pancetta with the hot oil, and then the beaten eggs. The egg will cook in the heat from the pasta, but here is where the trick comes in; you need to stir the egg into the mix so that it cooks into a cream and not hundreds of pieces of tiny omelette. Add the cheese, and if the mixture is too dry, stir in a little of the cooking water from the pasta (not more than a spoonful).

Serve it with coarse-ground black pepper

Variations

It's possible to make variations of carbonara using different meats and cheeses.
Two tasty combinations are parmesan with Italian sausage (skin the sausages and crumble them into the frying pan), and gruyere with beacon.

Using different shapes of noodles will also get you different results. With wathever you might go, it will be tasty for sure.

Finally, if you can get it, to be truly authentic you should use not diced pancetta but guanciale, or pig's cheek.