You Know Carbonara, Meet CARLABONARA

hello My Little Pork bellies it's Carla and I'm here again in my kitchen today with one of the great pastas that is a pasta you've never heard of that's right today I am making Carla banara it's not carbonara and I'll tell you exactly why in order to make carbonara and write carbonara for a North American audience one of the first things that we always say is traditionally carbonara is made with either Panetta or Guan chal but if you can't find them use bacon well it's a supered up thing to say because actually carbonara is a very specific dish it's one of the classic dishes of Rome and if you don't use Panetta and you don't use Guan chal you are not making carbonara I thought why don't we just lean into the bacon of it all we're going to let bacon be our leader we are intentionally choosing bacon we're going to get chewy and crunchy and creamy and sassy it's not carbonara it's carbonara I have a big pot of water coming to a boil for the pasta so while that is happening I'm going to do a little bit of prep so let's talk about bacon choices ideally you will find a thick cut bacon just look for if you're buying a packaged bacon a really like double thick cut we want as thick as you can get it so if that means that actually you're walking up to the butcher counter and saying Carla said that I need really thick bacon for my Carla banara can you take a piece of slab bacon and cut it nice and thick for me and they will say Carla banara everybody's been asking for that I've been cutting slab bacon all day you'll be like yeah I can't wait to make it and that will be how that goes I want to cut these so that once they've rendered their fat there's still bacon you want to see bacon you want to bite into bacon I think I did four rounds of carb banara and at one point it was called carbonara but but you know branding so Carla Bernard it is the first time I did it I had this vision of like crosswise thinly cut more like this size and I got them like super super super crispy and then I thought that was going to be what I wanted they were too crispy if there is such a thing and I didn't like the size of them at all and we didn't go with that version where we went was back to a little bit of a wider cut so that you can get crispy but also have some chewy in the center when you go that small it's just all crisp this is half a pound um depending on how thickly cut your bacon is that could be like between six and eight slices there's other things like eggs in this recipe that obviously overlaps with the classic carbonara I've also got parm a little bit of olive oil so some of the flavors definitely inspired and then some things I don't know dare I say we've made improvements bacon is done I've got Walnut halves these are raw not toasted not roasted not seasoned and I'm going to cut these it's a very annoying thing to write into a recipe but like medium fine or on the finer side of coarse what is that smallish pieces like I don't want you to mince it but I also don't want a walnut half I don't know are they qu inch at the end of the day are they pinoli size they're closer I am to find Le chopped you guys saw barbie I went to the Walnut looks great you want to go course go course you want to chop it in a tiny bits I I'm I can't I'm not there and I can't stop you time to go we're starting cold that's going to help us get better rendering of the bacon if you go right into a hot pan you get seizing and you get searing and you might get Browning before you have given time for rendering so our beautiful thick cut bacon goes in and then I'll put it over medium this is in general just a good practice whenever you're making bacon or any other fatty pork product so I'm going to cook this gently encouraging the fat to render until it is somewhere between crispy and chewy sort of like half the fat will be rendered when it's at the texture some amount of Browning and that's going to take 10 to 14 minutes right on schedule my bacon is gorgeous and beautiful I'm going to kill the heat take it out and I have a little paper towel line plate over here I want all of these renderings though so I'm putting it on the paper towel to keep it this like beautiful crisp chewy and I'll show you the texture once I have them all out on the plate this is a pretty perfect one right here you're getting some Browning around the edges it's starting to crisp up in the center this little meaty part got darker um it's firm but it's chewy and some of these have little crispy edges so that's perfect I'm going to save the renderings and I want to use a measured amount so I'm going to pour all of them off off in a little heat proof bowl and then I'm going to return 3 tablespoons back into the pan I don't want the finished dish to be greasy so that's why I measured and also bake in the fattiness like you know sometimes you'll get strips of bacon that seem like they're all fat and then you would just have a lot more fat in the pan than I do so it might seem slightly fussy but I want you to know why measuring that 3 tablespoons back in this is the fat that I'm going to toast the chopped walnuts I turn the pan off I'm going to put it back over medium heat the walnuts are going to pick up some of the saltiness and the brine of the bacon I'm still going to season them but just keep that in mind that even though you haven't added salt these are going to be salted by the fat in the pan these are going to cook for about 3 to 5 minutes go by what they look like not necessarily by the time you want to see some nice golden brown on all of the lighter sides they should smell really aromatic don't take them too far burned nuts or overly browned nuts um can be tanic and bitter so just keep an eye it goes pretty quickly and season at the end in the two or actually almost three versions of Carla banara that I made I just wasn't like it just did it wasn't enough like it just needed more everything and it made me think about Guan chal and it made me think about pan petta and like why you don't have that problem when you're using those because Panetta and Guan chal are cured they're not smoked but they're cured with various spices and so the simple add of chili flake into the Walnut like brought a lot to the table at the end this is also the reason why there's a little lemon zest and a little garlic just I felt like the dish was missing some of the little bit of sourness that you get from a cured meat um a little bit of the funk a little bit of the heat that explains that we still love bacon water is boiling time for pasta droppage because this is Carla banara Carla is using Carla's like I'm obsessed with this shape they're like fusili Gigante or something it's everything to me this shape is literally everything to me while the pasta's cooking I'm pull together everything that's going to go into the sauce at the end so I'm using three large egg yolks and I'm going to try to do the trick that all the pastry chefs do that instead of separating the egg you do this I usually break the yolk when I do it but I feel wild I feel crazy today living on the edge instead of backing and forthing you just take the the yolks out just like that oh it's so much easier wow so easy it's so easy and and simple okay so you just go blop see this is thing people are like worried about breaking the Yol like it's borderline difficult I back and forth and bl blur blurby blurb I think I'm ovulating I would say that that technique doesn't work for me to my egg yolks I'm adding half a cup of ricotta so the ricotta is delicious obviously it's a cheese it's sweet it's lactic also making like a dairy egg yolk mixture here is going to help with the creaminess of the finished pasta without loading us up with tons of egg yolks or risking potential egg yolk scram ulation later so I'm using ricot we've got parm in this dish we've got walnuts bacon like this all of this like totally goes and is delicious and it's not going to feel like a ricotta pasta it's just going to feel really luscious and creamy without all of the saltiness necessarily of just doing 100% parm or peino speaking of parm whole bunch also going in zest of one lemon the lemon is giving us some of that bright sour cured meat something something actually I was with Cosmo Cosmo tasted like I think version number three with me and we both agreed it was just like not it just wasn't there yet and I I grated lemon over our serving so we took a few bites he gave a little feedback we were like me and we added the lemon zest and he said I don't hate it so that was good enough for me his Tas is better than mine 100% like the tongue the tongue ages with the rest of us does it get wise well the tongue has yes the tongue is wise but the tongue is also like a bit deadened I don't want to say the tongue has become jaded but like certain flavors the tongue is like yes I have tasted that before I'm not like going to go like get all excited about it again so that's I think where my tongue is at okay it's going to look really tight but I want everything combined and I'm going to use what's remaining of my Bacon Fat just to give this like also some bacony goodness and fat carries flavor ricotta is fairly lowfat actually I'm not going to add this to the pasta directly if I were to do so like I did during development I would scramble the eggs what I'm going to do is I'm going to temper the eggs by adding some of the hot pasta water slowly bringing the egg up to a warmer temperature so that then when it combines with the hot pasta it's going to go through instead of seizing up and scrambling you do want to whisk the whole time you do this having the ricotta in here with the egg yolk is another nice little insurance policy that the egg yolk won't scramble cuz there's lots of other ingredient here and like the mass of that ingredient is going to help spread the egg yolk around so this is also like the amount of water that I would normally scoop out of the pasta anyway to set aside side to toss in while I'm making the sauce I'm going to hold back a little bit but even though it looks liquidy I would have added a ton of pasta water to the sauce anyway last but not least my walnuts have cooled down enough I'm going to toss together the bacon Walnut mixture in a vessel that is slightly too small being true to myself big round of applause for Gigante it's very owl it's not the ow owl that I normally tell you guys to do because I'm not going to put it back over the heat after draining I'm back from draining same pot hot pot see the steam super hot noodles are going back in so now I'm going to add my egg yolk ricotta mixture back into the noodles while stirring again we're just making sure we don't get any scrambling and you're going to SM smell right away delicious lemony Aromas because the lemon is now hitting this hot pot it's opening up you're going to get delicious garlicky Aromas I can just stay here and stir until I start to see this thicken and it's going to thicken because the egg yolk is tightening it's going to thicken because the parm is melting and becoming more of a binder and it's going to thicken because some of the starch is rubbing off of my beautiful fusili so something that was once quite liquidy is now not it's like heavy cream texture it's coating it's holding together it's Rich it looks like a sauce now half of the bacon Walnut mixture is going to go in the other half of the bacon Walnut mixture is going to be something that people can sprinkle onto their each individual plates we want them to see the bacon we want them to feel the bacon and it also just looks pretty not everything gets coated so if you are taking a photo of this it's a little food styling trick to just do half in and half on top so you can see everything the one thing I'm not seeing is black pepper and carb banara and carbonara both like black pepper to quote my dear friend Molly BOS with this pasta more is more lay it on you don't want a pasta that at the table you have to like add a ton of cheese add a ton of salt add a ton of pepper in order to make make what you've been served taste good it should really need like not very much so make sure this is what you want to eat Carla banara ready to be served so the way that you could do it is you as the server and the preparer you could top everybody's plate with the little bacon Walnut extra smoochi Gucci or you can bring this to the table with the parm and everybody can do it themselves top bacon that's the bacon that's on top I'll do a little more Walnut for that guy a little parmesano regano bada bing bada boom that's it is this pasta good enough to be named after me if it isn't then I failed myself o la la M top bacon is so important it is just so important to have in your life cuz it really says hello to your palette right away this is the thing so we have our classic dishes of Rome right they're old schooled they're institutionalized it's the Canon it's this it's that it has to be this it has to be that forget about it forget about them it doesn't matter if it belongs or it doesn't because this is this next generation is like I don't care Ma burn it down and resurrect it thusly have you ever seen a baby eat a lemon talk about a taste sensation babies are flipping out when they taste stuff I put salt in my baby food you're not supposed to but I was like I have to put a tiny bit of salt into this cuz I really want it to taste good they turned out just fine they've got great little pallets

Channel: Carla Lalli Music

Views: 99,376

Keywords: carla, carla lalli, carla lalli music, carla music, carla pasta recipe, carla ba, carla bon appetit, carla pasta, carla lalli music pasta, carla lalli pasta, carla music pasta, carla pasta recipe at home, carla lalli music carbonara, carla carbonara, carlabonara, carbonara with bacon, carla lalli carbonara, carbonara pasta recipe

Id: BJ56CFYuO8g

Length: 16min 22sec (982 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 27 2023