Cookbook | Ingredients | Recipes

| American cuisine | Italian cuisine | Meat Recipes 

American style Carbonara sauce: This recipe was shown to me by Dottore (Doctor) Roberto Schirra, in the Italian Army, who welcomed us into his Turin apartment at the end of our strenuous deployment. He explained that it was named for the charcoal that it was first cooked over.

Ingredients

• 3-4 quarts boiling salted water
• 8 ounces spaghetti
• 3 tablespoons olive oil
• 4 slices smoked bacon, diced
• 1 medium onion, chopped
• ½ teaspoon-1 tablespoon crushed red pepper
• 12-16 ounces tomato sauce
• 2-4 ounces freshly grated Parmesan cheese

Procedure

1. Boil spaghetti 6 minutes or so, just al dente, drain.
2. As water is put on to boil, start heating olive oil in medium saucepan, and sauté bacon until fat is just clear.
3. Add onion and sauté until soft.
4. Add crushed red pepper and cook 2-3 minutes more.
5. Add tomato sauce and heat through.
6. Remove from heat, add Parmesan cheese, and serve immediately over spaghetti.
7. May garnish with additional Parmesan cheese.

Tips, Notes, and Variations

• As this is for cooking, virgin or extra virgin olive oil is not necessary, any grade, even "pure" olive oil is sufficient.
• "Al dente" means "to the tooth." The pasta should be firm in the center when bitten.
• Amount of crushed red peppers is widely variable to suit your taste.
• As we sat down to eat, one of my fellow troops reached behind him and got some bread from the counter, Dottore Schirra frowned and said, "You would eat bread with bread?"