Spaghetti Carbonara....a la tranio!....

I'z made two batches--but it'll just look like I magically turned snow peas into asparagus with a slight of hand. Because I am just THAT magical.

This was my fabulous second batch--with TWICE as much white wine, 30% more eggs, and loads more pecorino ^_^ I have to say tho, that extra white wine really does add a lot more depth to all these flavours and...yummaaaaaaaay. aaaaaaay. aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay.

It's kind of...really about timing with carbonara. You should boil the water right before you cook the bacon and sautee the greens so that hopefully by the time you're sauteeing and it's going off the pan, the pasta is just a couple min away from being taken out. It's kind of like garlic & oil pasta but hopefully not THAT much oil to work with b/c....that's a whole lotta bacon fat and ur veggies are gonna be greasy--and if that coats ur pasta then it'll make it hard for the carbonara sauce to coat the linguini.

This be the pre-tossing and pre sauce--i'll write up the recipe below. Purty much what I like to do is cherry-pick from a handful of diff recipes and then fudge the amounts and (possibly throw in some fish sauce HEHEHE...*ahem*) modify i to my liking and...adventuresome. The prep pics and the one under is of the 1st batch--i think I actually thought "EFF IT!" to the wine in the first batch b/c I've neve really cooked with wine...that and I dunno...the wine I had was pretty random from Astor wine.

The big thing is NO CREAM. none none none. I think cream is gross but that's from...some bad experiences with cream growing up. Plus it's a little cheating no? I really don't think you should use parmesan cheese (SERIOUS) and never cream. Parmesan is just..overplayed and for the most part pales in comparison in terms of adding flavor.

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SPAGHETTi CARBONARA
....w/ White Wine, Pecorino, Pine Nuts, Asparagus,
Pancetta, & Crushed Black Peppers!...

1 box of linguine (bigger surface area!)

1 bunch of asparagus (I might have split that half green & half white asparagus)

1/2 pound of bacon or pancetta

1-1.5 cups of white wine (cheap is fine, if not perfect. somethign tart and vibrant)

6-7 eggs (if it's the smaller eggs then yeh go w/ the extra)

1.5 cups of shaved/grated Pecorino cheese


a buttload of garlic :D

Prep the sauce stuffs first!!! So...crack all those eggs in a bowl, some seasoning (like fishsauce :D) if u please but REALLY sparingly b/c the pecorino packs a punch. Anyway--so the other recipes called for like 1/2 a cup but I kinda eyeballed it at first--then I thought OH WHAT THE HAY and poured in as I liked. I'm guestimating 1-1.5 cups of white wine :D. Now to balance that out, I ended up grating in more pecorino to balance it out and add more texture. Visually you'll know what you want in terms of viscosity so...do what u will. Black peppers, whisk whisk whisk.

Cut up asparagus into i guess..1-2cm chunks whatever u want. Slice up the bacon/pancetta/guanciale if u can get it into strips the width of your ring or pinky finger--throw it into the pan (no butter or oil). Render the fat blah blah--I tend to end up skimming out some fat cuz it's kinda...insane how much comes out. I use this to toast the pine nuts or whatever nuts you want. I had extra snow peas one night so I used that--but I def like the asparagus. Sautee either one (snow peas if u want more crunch) briefly in with the bacon. Needless to say there was a ton of garlic in there already--sometimes I end up using like...6-7 cloves. HEEHEH...*ahem*.

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NOW--tricky part...per se. MAKE SURE THE PASTA IS STRAIGHT FROM THE POT and pretty damn hot (don't really rinse...just pull it out with that pronged pasta thing, quick couple flicks of the wrist to remove excess water and then straight into that pan with bacon & greens). You can see my pasta cover the bacon/greens bits but DON"T mix yet. Pour in the carbonara sauce--it's raw eggs so the hot pasta will cook it through--but I just put the whole thing on super low heat and constantly tossed and stired just to be sure.

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It's like omelletes--u still want it a little runny. Otherwise it's like...scrambled eggs and spaghetti. NO. no no no no. :) Pine nuts in there, toss toss toss, chopped parsley for some color and some freshness. My version removes a lot of the pasta and overloads on the sauce b/c it's creamy and I wants creamy and a bigger sauce to spaghetti ratio!! 1lb pasta might be much. I think I might've just used 80% of the box. Again...lotsa eyeballin' :P

I'm tired. good luck. f*ck around with it! This is the basis for some bangin' carbonara. HONESTLY the pecorino (and EXTRA pecorino cheese :P) and extra white wine helps. I think I really lucked out that my white wine was pretty tart but still mild and bright. It was some cheap bottle from Astor wines. Sleepy time. PEACE.