Chestnut Carbonara

I’m the last guy to mess with tradition. Ask anybody who has eaten in my home when I am working the line and all will tell you the same thing: The guy leans heavily towards perfecting the classics, not merely approximating or (gasp!) reinventing them.

Take Spaghetti alla Carbonara. It took me years to get this seemingly simple Roman classic right—a lot of them. When I did finally manage it (“The Best Spaghetti Carbonara“) I never looked back.

Until last night, that is. For reasons that cannot be explained I spent the entire day pondering how the addition of chestnuts—yes, chestnuts—might impact a classic carbonara.

Scratch that, actually. I spent the entire day convinced that the addition of chestnuts would make an absolutely terrific addition to this classic. So what if a Web search around midday discovered virtually no evidence that anybody else in the culinary universe had come to the same conclusion.

Whaddyagonnado?

So, this is around one-third pound of my homemade pancetta. It’s what I begin every carbonara with. You can use pancetta, or guanciale, or even thick-cut bacon.

Chop the meat into small, thick chunks, like so. (Of course, this is also a good time to get your pasta water going, as this won’t take very much time at all.)

This is around a quarter pound of cooked-and-peeled chestnuts, which should also be chopped, like so.

This is three large eggs, one egg yolk, and 1/2 cup of grated and mixed Pecorino Romano and Parmigiano-Reggiano cheeses.

Mix the egg and cheese together and then add a good dose of freshly grated black pepper.

In a large skillet cook the pancetta in olive oil, slowly and at a low flame, until lightly browned. Stir in the chestnuts and saute for another minute, then turn off the heat and wait for three minutes before proceeding further.

After the pan with the pancetta and chestnuts has cooled for three minutes add the egg and cheese mixture and let it stand until your pasta is cooked.

When your pasta is al dente add it to the pan and quickly incorporate. The hot pasta and slightly warmed egg and cheese mixure should provide ample heat to cook the egg to proper carbonara consistency. If not, and the egg remains very wet, carefully apply just a little flame to finish things off—but be very careful, as too much heat will scramble the eggs.

All that’s left to do now is plate the pasta (I used bucatini here, which works well with carbonara), grate some cheese over it, and serve.

I was right about this being a swell idea, by the way. But take the recipe out for a spin and let me know what you think.

Chestnut Carbonara
Recipe

1/3 pound pancetta, diced into cubes
1/4 pound cooked chestnuts, roughly chopped
3 tbsp extra-virgin olive oil
3 large eggs, plus one egg yolk
1/2 cup freshly grated mix of Pecorino Romano and Parmigiano-Reggiano
Freshly ground black pepper
1 lb. pasta (spaghetti is traditional but here I used bucatini)

Heat the oil in a large pan over low heat. Add the pancetta and sauté until lightly browned, then stir in the chestnuts and sauté another minute. Turn off the heat and let cool for 3 minutes.
Mix 3 large eggs and one egg yolk in a bowl with the grated cheese and a generous dose of black pepper. Pour the mixture into the warm pan and stir.
When the pasta is al dente add it to the pan and stir vigorously until thoroughly coated. Plate, top with grated cheese and serve.

Orecchiette with broccoli & pancetta

I was on my own last night, and had planned on heading out for a burger. But then I got to searching the travel websites for a very-much-hoped-for European trip this fall. Naturally the search brought me to Italy and, well, there went the beef-and-beer plans.

This whole thing took around half an hour. And everything I needed was already in the house. So was plenty of wine, of course, and so I cracked open a bottle and got to work.

In enough well-salted water to cook a pound of pasta, blanch a large head of broccoli, or a couple medium-size heads, then set aside. Do not throw away the water; you’ll be using it to cook the pasta.

At medium heat slowly saute around 1/3-pound of cubed pancetta (or bacon if you prefer) in olive oil until lightly crisp, then remove from the pan with a slotted spoon.

Saute 4 or 5 sliced garlic cloves in the same pan, along with some hot pepper if you like.

Once the garlic has softened add the pancetta and the broccoli to the pan and incorporate.

After the orecchiette is cooked add it to the pan using a large slotted spoon. Again, do not throw away the pasta water just yet.

All that’s left to do now is add around three ladles full of the pasta water and incorporate.

Oh, and top with some grated cheese.

But you knew that.

Pancetta drop biscuits

I know I’m a day late but yesterday was the first time I experimented with these biscuits. Surely you’ve got leftovers from Thanksgiving. Some freshly made biscuits to go along with those can’t be such a bad idea, right?

The basic biscuit recipe is from Cook’s Illustrated. I’ve made the biscuits several times before and they always turn out great. The addition of the pancetta is just something I came up with yesterday morning. And judging by the reaction from My Associate (“Holy crap, these are the BEST BISCUITS EVER!!!) I am pretty sure that I’ll be making them again.

Maybe even today.

In a bowl mix together 2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour, 2 teaspoons baking powder, 1/2 teaspoon baking soda, 1 teaspoon sugar, and 3/4 teaspoon table salt. (The full recipe is printed below, so relax, no need to take notes.)

In a separate bowl add 1 cup cold buttermilk. Then add 8 tablespoons of melted unsalted butter that’s cooled just slightly.

Stir until clumps form.

Add the buttermilk/butter mix and finely diced and fried pancetta to the flour mixture and incorporate.

The dough should pull together pretty quickly.

Drop the biscuit dough onto a parchment-lined baking sheet and place in an oven preheated to 475°F. Start checking the biscuits at 12 minutes. When they become golden brown they’re done.

These took around 15 minutes. When they’re out of the oven brush the tops with melted butter.

Cool on a rack for a few minutes.

And serve.

My Associate just got out of bed. And, as suspected, I am back on biscuit detail today. See ya.

Recipe
Pancetta Drop Biscuits
Adapted from Cook’s Illustrated‘s Best Drop Biscuits Recipe and provided by Serious Eats

Ingredients
2 cups (10 ounces) unbleached all-purpose flour 
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon sugar 
3/4 teaspoon table salt
1 cup cold buttermilk
8 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted and cooled slightly (about 5 minutes), plus 2 tablespoons melted butter for brushing biscuits 
1/4 lb. pancetta, diced finely and fried until lightly crispy

Directions 
1. Adjust oven rack to middle position and heat oven to 475°F. Whisk flour, baking powder, baking soda, sugar, and salt in large bowl. Combine buttermilk and 8 tablespoons melted butter in medium bowl, stirring until butter forms small clumps.
2. Add buttermilk mixture and pancetta to dry ingredients and stir with rubber spatula until just incorporated and batter pulls away from sides of bowl. Using greased 1/4-cup dry measure, scoop level amount of batter and drop onto parchment-lined rimmed baking sheet (biscuits should measure about 2 1/4 inches in diameter and 1 1/4 inches high). Repeat with remaining batter, spacing biscuits about 1 1/2 inches apart. Bake until tops are golden brown and crisp, 12 to 14 minutes.
3. Brush biscuit tops with remaining 2 tablespoons melted butter. Transfer to wire rack and let cool 5 minutes before serving.

Pumpkin & pancetta pasta

And you thought I paid scant attention to the changing of the seasons.

Peeshaw!

I know a good-looking cucurbita when I see one, you know. And when I saw this American Tondo pumpkin there wasn’t a lot of hand-wringing over what to do with it: I’d make some pasta. Imagine that.

Dice up the pumpkin flesh and put it in a baking dish with olive oil, rosemary, nutmeg, a good dose of kosher salt and some ground black pepper. Place in an oven preheated to 375 degrees F.

Around 30 to 40 minutes later the pumpkin should be plenty done and so remove the pan from the oven and set aside.

Dice around a half pound of pancetta (or bacon if you prefer) into cubes and saute slowly in olive oil until crisp but not burned. Set aside and drain all but a little bit of the pork fat from the pan. The pan should be big enough to accommodate the pasta later on.

Add some olive oil to the fat and saute a few garlic cloves and a little hot pepper until softened.

Then add the pancetta.

Next add your cooked pasta (a half pound here), a good dose of the well-salted pasta water, and some grated cheese (I used caciocavallo).

Add the roasted pumpkin and gently stir together. (I did not use the entire pumpkin here, only around two cups’ worth after roasting.)

And you have got yourself a pretty nice Autumn meal.

I know I did.

The best Spaghetti Carbonara

Tell the truth. Have you eaten more very good Spaghetti alla Carbonara in your lifetime, or more so-so?

That’s what I figured. If ever a dish proved that simple recipes are the most difficult to prepare, this one is it.

Carbonara is one of my top go-to meals, and so I figure it’s about time I shared it here. The recipe is from David Downie’s “Cooking the Roman Way.” It’s a reliable, honest, authentic Roman preparation, and I’ve been using it for several years now.

Best of all it isn’t at all so-so. Give it a shot, you’ll see.

You start out with a nice piece of pancetta (this is my homemade stuff), guanciale or even bacon if you prefer.

Dice it all up so’s to fry it in olive oil.

Mix together some grated Pecorino Romano cheese, a good hit of freshly ground pepper, three eggs, and an egg yolk.

Here’s the part that is most important (the full recipe is below). The egg and cheese mixture is added to the cooked pancetta, but only after the pan has been allowed to cool for three minutes.

You can see that the pan isn’t hot enough to cook the eggs, but it does allow for just enough of a head start on the cooking.

As soon as the pasta is cooked it’s added to the warm pan with all the other ingredients.

This is when the combination of the hot pasta and the already-warmed ingredients allows things to actually become cooked. (If it remains uncooked after stirring, turn on the heat and keep stirring, but only briefly; otherwise the eggs will scramble.)

Here’s how a proper Carbonara should look, as far as I’m concerned anyway.

And I’m concerned an awful lot.

Spaghetti alla Carbonara
Recipe
Adapted from “Cooking the Roman Way” by David Downie

4 ounces pancetta, guanciale or bacon (I use a little more)
2 Tbsp extra-virgin olive oil
4 large eggs, at room temperature
2 Tbsp freshly grated Pecorino Romano (I use twice that amount)
Freshly ground black pepper
Kosher salt or coarse sea salt (I use regular salt)
1 lb. spaghetti
1 cup freshly grated cheese, half Parmigiano-Reggiano, half Pecorino Romano

Bring at least 5 quarts of water to a boil in a large pot.
Roughly chop the pancetta, guanciale or bacon. You should have about 3/4 of a cup. (I use about a cup.)
Heat the oil in a very large, high-sided frying pan over medium. Add the pork and stir, sautéing until crisp. Turn off the heat under the frying pan and let it cool for 3 minutes.
Separate one of the eggs. Put the yolk in a small mixing bowl and save the white for other uses. Crack the remaining 3 eggs into the mixing bowl and beat thoroughly, incorporating 2 heaping tablespoons of Pecorino Romano and an extremely generous pinch of black pepper. Pour the mixture into the warm frying pan and stir.
Add a pinch of salt to the boiling water (I use lots of salt to cook pasta, not just a pinch). Drop the pasta, stir and cover the pot. When the water returns to a boil remove the lid and cook, uncovered, until the pasta is barely al dente.
Drain the pasta and transfer it immediately to the frying pan with the egg mixture. Stir vigorously until thoroughly coated. Cover the frying pan and let stand for 1 minute.
Serve with a peppermill and a bowl of Parmigiano-Reggiano and Pecorino Romano on the side.

How to make pancetta

I hope that you enjoy looking at pictures and captions. Because I have got an absolute ton of them for you here.

Making pancetta (basically Italian salt-cured bacon) at home is simple. It only takes a little bit of prep time; the rest of the time you are waiting for the meat to cure and then dry. I’m going to run through every one of the steps, if you don’t mind.

In case you didn’t know, pancetta (just as any bacon) is made from pork belly. You can certainly start out by using just a small slab of belly, but here we are making a big old mess of pancetta. What we have here is a whole belly, with the ribs still attached. It weighed in at about 14 pounds total. (Hey, I have people who have come to expect their allotment of every batch that I make.)

Here is the belly after the ribs have been cut away. You can see by the fold on the left that the skin is on (normally the case when you buy a whole belly), but it needs to be removed.

Once the skin is removed it’s time to apply the cure. (Because I am always fiddling with the actual cure, I’ve decided to reprint the complete recipe and instructions for making pancetta from a reliable source, the book “Charcuterie,” by Michael Ruhlman and Brian Polcyn; they are at the very end of this post.) This pic shows the cure already spread onto the fat side of one piece of the belly, but the other piece needs it too, as does the meat side of the belly. The reason I’ve cut the belly in half is because a whole one is too large to roll. If you were not going to roll it, then leaving the belly in one piece would be fine.

After applying the cure all around, place each piece in its own big plastic bag and put into the fridge. They stay in the fridge for at least a week, often longer. And I flip the pieces over once a day. This batch was in the fridge for 11 days.

The next step is to run the belly under cool water and clean off all the cure mixture, then dry it well using paper towels. Once it’s clean and dry you put down a good dose of coarse black pepper on the meat side of the belly. Then you roll it nice and tight, the tighter the better actually, to prepare it for tying.

Once it’s rolled and tied it’s time to hang it in a cool place for at least two weeks.

So that we could also see an example of the slab type of pancetta I didn’t roll the other half of the belly. When you do it this way, though, it’s good to wrap the belly in cheesecloth before hanging it. The flat, slab-like pancetta hangs in a cool place, just like the rolled, but it’s ready quicker.

This one was ready in about 10 days.

Nice, huh? I like this batch a lot. The flavors are both rich and mild at the same time.

Here is the rolled pancetta, ready to be cut down and used. It hung in the garage for about 23 days.

I usually slice rolled pancetta into pieces around an inch thick.

Then I vacuum pack each piece individually. The ones that I don’t give away to my demanding family and friends go into the freezer, as the pancetta lasts longer that way.

The only trouble is that I do not get to keep that many of the pieces for myself.

Maybe I should just shut my big mouth the next time a new batch of the stuff is ready.

Pancetta

Recipe

From “Charcuterie”

by Michael Ruhlman and Brian Polcyn
This is for a 5-pound piece of pork belly, skin removed

For the dry cure

4 garlic cloves, minced

2 teaspoons pink salt (see Note below)

1/4 cup kosher salt

2 tablespoons dark brown sugar

4 tablespoons coarsely ground black pepper

2 tablespoons juniper berries, crushed with the bottom of a small saute pan

4 bay leaves, crumbled

1 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg

4 or 5 sprigs fresh thyme

Directions

1. Trim the belly so that its edges are neat and square.

2. Combine the garlic, pink salt, kosher salt, dark brown sugar, juniper berries, bay leaves, nutmeg, thyme, and half the black pepper in a bowl and mix thoroughly so that the pink salt is evenly distributed. Rub the mixture all over the belly to give it a uniform coating over the entire surface.

3. Place the belly in a 2-gallon Ziploc bag or in a covered nonreactive container just large enough to hold it. Refrigerate for 7 days. Without removing the belly from the bag, rub the belly to redistribute the seasonings and flip it over every other day (a process called overhauling).

4. After 7 days, check the belly for firmness. If it feels firm at its thickest point, it’s cured. If it still feels squishy, refrigerate it on the cure for 1 to 2 more days.

5. Remove the belly from the bag or container, rinse it thoroughly under cold water, and pat it dry. Sprinkle the meat side with the remaining black pepper. Starting from a long side, roll up the pork belly tightly, as you would a thick towel, and tie it very tightly with butcher’s string at 1- to 2-inch intervals. It’s important that there are no air pockets inside the roll. In other words, it can’t be too tightly rolled. Alternately, the pancetta can be left flat, wrapped in cheesecloth, and hung to dry for 5 to 7 days.

6. Using the string to suspend it, hang the rolled pancetta in a cool, humid place to dry for 2 weeks. The ideal conditions are 50°F to 60°F (8°C to 15°C) with 60 percent humidity, but a cool, humid basement works fine, as will most any place that’s out of the sun. Humidity is important: If your pancetta begins to get hard, it’s drying out and should be wrapped and refrigerated. The pancetta should be firm but pliable, not hard. Because pancetta isn’t meant to be eaten raw, the drying isn’t as critical a stage as it is for items such as prosciutto or dry-cured sausages. But drying pancetta enhances its texture, intensifies its flavor, and helps it to last longer.

7. After drying, the pancetta can be wrapped in plastic and refrigerated for 3 weeks or more, or frozen for up to 4 months. Freezing makes it easier to slice thin.

Note: Pink salt, a curing salt with nitrite, is called by different names and sold under various brand names, such as tinted cure mix or T.C.M., DQ Curing Salt, and Insta Cure #1. The nitrite in curing salts does a few special things to meat: It changes the flavor, preserves the meat’s red color, prevents fats from developing rancid flavors, and prevents many bacteria from growing.