@fnune's carbonera

[noahp]

stolen wholesale

Fake mushroom carbonara recipe for --

Ingredients for 1 person:

- 1 egg
- 1 big garlic clove, or two small
- pasta, preferring in descending order: linguine/bavette, spaghetti
- cheese, preferring in descending order: pecorino, parmesan, grana padano
- mushrooms (I prefer regular brown champignons)
- black pepper
- olive oil
- salt

Optional:

- basil leaves

In the original carbonara recipe, there's no need for oil, salt, garlic or
basil leaves, because guanciale (the "bacon") is very fatty and full of flavor.
But we use mushrooms, so we need to fix that somehow.

Steps (you can do these sections in parallel):

- Prepare the pasta:
  - Boil some unsalted water, enough to let the pasta move freely inside the 
  - Once it's a running boil, salt the water
    - Taste the water and confirm that it's at almost sea-water-level salty
  - Put in the pasta
    - If the water doesn't cover the pasta, you can gently press it down into
      the boiling water without breaking it, it will start to bend very quickly
  - Stir the pasta inside the pan whenever you have a free hand

- Prepare the sauce:
  - Lightly whisk one egg in a bowl
  - Mix it with grated cheese until it looks golden and it becomes fairly thick
  - Grind some black pepper on top of it, quite a bit of it
 
- Prepare the veggies:
  - Chop garlic (smash it first and then chop it into tiny chunks)
  - Chop mushrooms into whatever shape you like (I like fine slices)
  - Heat up 2-3 tsp of olive oil on a pan (medium heat)
  - Once hot, put in the garlic
    - Stir whenever you can or move the pan so that the garlic doesn't burn
  - A minute or two after that, put in the mushrooms
  - Steal a spoonful or two of water from the pasta and put it in the pan (use
    the pasta water as your salt)

Once the pasta is flexible but still too hard to eat:

  - Pour some pasta water into a glass (just tilt the saucepan)
    - Throw away the rest of the water (or store for future sauces?)
    - You can also drain the pasta
  - Put the pasta into the pan with the veggies
    - Stir and water it with the water you saved, until it's al dente
    - Don't use all the water at once, pour bit by bit
  - Once it's al dente, turn off the heat (very important) and wait for it to
    stop sizzling
  - Once it stops sizzling (or is close to), pour in the egg/cheese/black
    pepper sauce
  - This is the most important part: stir aggressively to avoid getting an
    omelette
    - If it's too thick, pour a little bit more pasta water

Once you're satisfied with how it looks (the egg has mixed in well and doesn't
look raw), serve immediately. I like to garnish with basil, more grated cheese,
a dash of black pepper, and maybe a dash of olive oil on top.