Andrea Tumbarello, chef at the Don Giovanni restaurants in Barcelona and Madrid, says that spaghetti carbonara is the Italian recipe that has to put up with the most “bastards.” And being the most widespread of Italian cuisine and possibly the one that has traveled the most around the world, it is also the most mistreated.
In Spain we are not short on atrocities: there are those who add cream, milk or even parsley to the Roman recipe. But to be able to call it by its real name, you have to make sure you don’t make these mistakes that we review today, April 6, World Carbonara Day.
That it is a cook from Alicante who prepares one of the best carbonaras in Italy is funny. Alba Esteve, in charge of the kitchen at the Roman restaurant Marzapane, won this title a few years ago when one of the most followed ‘foodie’ bloggers in Italy – Vicenzo Pagano – tried her spaghetti a la carbona on a visit to the restaurant. she. Since then, out of respect for Roman tradition, she has not dared to remove them from the menu of her restaurant.
There is no one better than her to explain to us that the first mistake that we Spaniards make with this dish is as simple as not cooking the pasta well. “We mistreat it, we do not respect its cooking or service times, we do not have the same sensitivity that Italians have with this product, perhaps due to a matter of education,” says Esteve.
Why do we make so much trouble if, as Tumbarello says, “all you have to do is add the pasta to the salted water when it is boiling and follow the cooking times indicated in the instructions on the package”? You don’t have to add “a bay leaf or olive oil,” explains the Italian chef, who gives us the trick to know when the pasta is al dente: “throwing the spaghetti against the wall is really stupid, for To know if they are al dente, you just have to take one out of the pot, bite it and see if there is a little white dot left inside. If it is all yellow, with a uniform color, it means that it has been overcooked.”
For the authentic spaghetti carbonara recipe, as the name already indicates, you need spaghetti, “not just any pasta,” says Tumbarello, who also calls it “mandatory” that it be of good quality – he uses the same one as the great Italian chefs with three Michelin stars, that of the Benedetto Cavalieri firm.
Much more widespread than the mistakes of adding cream or milk to spaghetti carbonara is that of adding bacon to the recipe. “In Italy they use the guanciale, that is, what for us is the dewlap of the pig, that part that goes down from the ear and ends at the neck,” explains Esteve.
The meat that is added to this Italian dish must be cured so that when toasted it is crispy on the outside and juicy on the inside. You also have to cut it “into one centimeter by one centimeter cubes,” adds the Italian chef Andrea Tumbarello, who assures that you must release all the fat in the pan so that it is well cooked.
The authentic recipe for spaghetti carbonara also uses egg yolk, a teaspoon of pecorino cheese (it can be substituted with a highly aged sheep’s cheese as an alternative if it is very difficult to find) and ground black pepper to make the sauce. “This is why it is called carbonara,” Tumbarello emphasizes, “because it should be black like coal.” Let us remember that ‘carbonara’ comes from ‘carbonari’, the Italian revolutionary movement of the 19th century that hid furtively in the mountains to which the origin of the recipe is attributed.
There are also those who, like Esteve, add a drop of white wine to the recipe, although there is still no consensus among Romans because in some houses it is done and in others it is not. But let’s return to the issue of the proportions of the sauce ingredients, the Italian chef Andrea Tumbarello recommends being very careful: “the correct thing is to put two egg yolks for every 100 grams of pasta and if we can use a different bowl to emulsify each portion of pasta in the sauce much better, because then the yolk will be less dry.”
Let’s recap: we have strained and drained the pasta and sautéed it in the pan along with the previously cooked pork jowl; We also have our sauce ready. What do we do now? “The most complicated step comes, the emulsification, because if the pasta is at a high temperature when adding the sauce, the egg cooks immediately and our dish can end up like a spaghetti omelette,” explains Esteve. Or as an egg and cheese soup, if, on the other hand, the pasta is too cold.
The key is to emulsify both parts of the recipe in a metal bowl and stir very quickly so that the sauce spreads well without running the risk of the egg drying out. “It’s the trick to making our spaghetti carbonara juicy,” concludes Tumbarello.