Saturday Lunch: Spaghetti Carbonera

I had a traumatic experience back in 2010 when I tried to make  Spaghetti Carbonera. It seemed so easy to tackle but I ended up a scrambled egg spaghetti mixture. Ghastly.

But then the Guardian  published a  lovely article on this comforting bacon-y goodness pasta dish, quite fun to read since they deconstructed each step of the recipe, like debating using Parmesan vs  Pecorino, and that you don't need to add cream or butter - that I just had to try out when I realized I had all these ingredients at home.

Pasta + Eggs + Cheese + Bacon seems uncomplicated but I realized the trick is in the timing.

The recipe published at the bottom of the article seemed to be massive quantity of food for two people and since it was just me,  I downsized the proportions for just 1 serving. I started by grating about 1/4th cup of Pecorino cheese. Cracked open one egg and mixed both together with lots of pepper.

In the meantime, I boiled about 70gm of spaghetti. A habit I picked up from my flatmate, always weigh my pasta out before cooking thereby preventing me from stuffing myself with pasta- which is so easy to do!

About 5 minutes before the spaghetti was done, I started frying the pancetta in pan (with a little bit of garlic which I later removed). When the spaghetti was done, I saved a little bit of the starchy cooking water and then added the spaghetti to the pan and mixed together with all the pancetta.

Then this is the important bit, take the pan off the heat and quickly mix in the egg-cheese mixture so that all the strands of spaghetti are coated, adding a little cooking water and serve immediately. DONE!