Main Ingredients:

See below ingredients and instructions of the recipe

Cooking Preparation of the Recipe:

1 lb Spaghetti (thin),
-rotini or equivalent
-pasta
2 tb Olive oil
1/2 lb Pancetta or bacon
1 md Yellow onion
-(chopped)
1/2 c Cold water
1/4 c Italian white wine,
-dry
4 Eggs
4 tb Heavy cream
8 tb Parmesan cheese
-(grated)

Put large bowl in oven to warm at lowest possible setting. Soak
chopped onion in cold water for 15 minutes to reduce pungency. Chop
Pancetta or bacon into 1/4-inch x 1-inch strips.

Beat eggs and cream together with a fork. Add about 4 T Parmesan
cheese to the mixture.

Wash pasta. Put on water to cook pasta. Add pasta when boiling. In
the meantime...

Dry onions and saute with pancetta or bacon in olive oil until onions
are barely translucent. Add wine and reduce heat when initial
boiling ceases. Meat should not be crisp.

When pasta is cooked, drain, but DO NOT WASH. Quickly remove bowl
from oven, put pasta in it and toss with egg, cream and cheese
mixture so that heat from pasta cooks eggs. Add meat, onions and wine
without draining fat and toss until thoroughly mixed. Sprinkle
remaining cheese to taste, toss and serve immediately.

NOTES:

* Spaghetti Carbonara, Neapolitan Style -- My wife and I had the
pleasure of staying at the Villa Virgiliana (owned by The Vergilian
Society) in Cuma, Italy just outside of Naples in June, 1985. Biagio
and Maria Sgariglia, the proprietors of the villa, served us
excellent Italian farm meals for a week, each meal being more
delicious than the last. This dish was the gastronomic highlight of
our stay.

* Pasta should be cooked AL DENTE so that it offers resistance to the
teeth without crunching. Fresh pasta is desirable (dried pasta is a
poor imitation of the real thing.) Pasta should be used immediately
when done so as to stop its internal cooking. If both portions of the
recipe cannot be completed at the same time, the meat and onion
mixture should finish first.

* I have made a very successful variation on this using hot country
sausage. Make sure the sausage is fairly lean if you try it, however.
All of the quantities are adjustable and may depend on the kind of
pasta or meat you use. Too much cream will cause the egg mixture to
separate from the pasta and meat. Too little cream will essentially
give you scrambled eggs and bacon with pasta.

: Difficulty: moderate to hard (timing is critical).
: Time: 30 minutes.
: Precision: measure the ingredients.

: Byron Howes
: North Carolina Education Computing Service, Research Triangle Park,
NC : bch#ecsvax or {akgua,decvax}!mcnc!ecsvax!bch

: Copyright (C) 1986 USENET Community Trust

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