First of all, I hope you all had a great festive season and had loads of good stuff to eat! We all probably gained a few kilograms over the holidays, but lets ignore that for now, and get cooking!
So there I was, driving back from our holiday spot, feeling thoroughly depressed about having to return to reality, when I stumbled across this amazing place. Happy Hog Butchery http://www.happyhog.co.za/. It’s situated on the R60, the road between Swellendam and Ashton. Do yourself a favour and have a look when you are in the area again, you won’t be disappointed.
When I got there they were actually closed for the day, but the nice lady opened up shop for me, took me through all their great products and helped me pick the good stuff. Great service! I ended up leaving with a rather large amount of pork products, most notably, a beautiful piece of free range Pancetta (italian bacon for those that don’t know what I am talking about). I immediately felt inspired, mulled a few dishes over in my head, and ended up deciding on the classic, Spaghetti ala Carbonara.
The recipe has so many variations it’s impossible to tell which is the real one, so I just winged it and came up with this.
Here goes!
First I got all my ingredients together, you will need:
For the Carbonara
- 1 pack Spaghetti
- +- 300g Pancetta (you can substitute this with normal bacon if you can’t find pancetta)
- 5 eggs
- 1 cup finely grated Parmesan (some recipes call for 50% pecorino and 50% parmesan. and yes I forgot to add this in the photo!)
- salt and pepper
- olive oil
And for the garlic bread
- A baguette or french loaf
- butter
- +- 6 cloves of garlic
- big handful of flat leaf parsley
Garlic Bread
This is real easy but worth doing yourself, way better than the store bought stuff. First make a garlic butter. Take about 200gm of soft butter (keep it out of the fridge for an hour or two before starting), chop up about 6 cloves or garlic and a large bunch of parsley, put it all in a bowl and mix well. If you used unsalted butter you may want to add a pinch of salt.
Slice up your bread at an angle.
load it generously with your freshly made garlic butter and place in a hotel pan with a little drying rack in the bottom, this keeps the bread out of the pool of butter that will form in the bottom of the pan.
Put that under your ovens grill for about 15 minutes and you’re done!
Spaghetti ala Carbonara
Now for the star of the show.
First in a large pot, get your pasta water going, salt it well, add a dash of olive oil and when the water is boiling add the pasta, stir it every now and then to avoid it sticking together. You don’t want to overcook the pasta so taste it every now and then. As soon as you can bite through it without finding a dry floury bit in the middle its just about ready.
The dice up the gorgeous pancetta, the smell of this beauty nearly brought tears to me eyes :)
Cut it into small cubes, chuck em in a pan with some olive oil (pre heat the pan and oil of course). Cook this over medium heat for about 10 minutes. The pan might get sticky, if that happens deglaze it with some water or white wine. (just pour a dash of it in a swirl around, it lifts up some of the sticky bits and adds to the flavour!)
You will hopefully end up with something like this.
Now for the egg sauce. It is important to keep all the other ingredients (pasta and pancetta) piping hot, because we won’t actually be cooking the egg on the stove. The heat from the pasta and pancetta will cook it in the mixing bowl, trust me!
Ok so in a large mixing bowl, add 3 whole eggs and two egg yolks. Whisk well. Add some black pepper and 1 cup of parmesan or pecorino, or a mix of the two. Whisk that until it becomes a not-too-dry paste.
NB Get a measuring jug or large mug and fill it with some of the pasta water you still have on the stove. You will need this to even out the consistency of the sauce.
Now from this point on things need to happen quickly, everything needs to stay hot or the egg wont cook.
Drain your pasta in a colander, don’t drain it too well, some extra pasta water is good and empty the colander on top of the egg mixture in your mixing bowl. Immediately start tossing the mixture, I used some kitchen tongs and it worked well.
You will notice the egg mixture will disappear from the bottom of the bowl and start sticking to the pasta. If you find the mix too dry, add some of the pasta water you kept in a mug and toss until you are happy with the consistency. Then add your Pancetta cubes and toss again. Voila, ready to serve.
There you have it, and authentic Italian dish. Once you get the hang of it, actually very quick and very easy :)
As always, comments and questions welcome!
