Carbonara

Very easy recipe. Very simple recipe.
I like to cook this when I want something hearty, but I can't be arsed to cook anything "proper". It doesn't take long at all. I don't know why most books have really complicated recipes for this with millions of (sometimes bizzare) ingredients, it's not complicated. It's a frickin' fry-up with cheese and pasta. It was invented by Italian coal miners (hence carbonara). Imagine a Geordie coalminer inventing some scran, it's not "haute-cuisine", it's just fantastically tasty and simple. Just because it's got an Italian name doesn't make it posh or difficult to cook.

Don't use cream, whatever you do. It will make the dish unnecessarily rich. It's already rich, you don't need to add cream. You wouldn't put cream on a fry-up, so you don't need it here. Carbonara recipes with cream are recipes written just in case idiots who can't be trusted not to poison themselves with undercooked cheap shitty eggs use them. You're not an idiot, are you? No, so you don't need cream. If you've been using cream before, you've been duped. This is better. Trust me.

Four ingredients:

• Pasta (as much as you want to eat, you don't need me to tell you how much that is)
• Eggs (cooking for one, I use 2. For 2 people, 3 is probably right)
• Pancetta/bacon (enough of it. about a handful of bits)
• Parmesan (a nose-sized bit, grated finely)

Notes on ingredients: 

1. Use a long thin pasta if possible (linguine, spaghetti, whatever), it works better as the sauce coats it nicely. More complicated shapes tend to make it a bit claggy, as the egg clumps up around it.
2. Use free range. Not only are barn eggs horrendously produced, and liable to salmonella, they're also not as tasty. When eggs are your main ingredient, they need to be tasty, and FR aren't much more expensive. Make sure they're fresh eggs. Put them, uncracked, in a load of water. If they float, they're not fresh, and should probs be chucked. Ignore the date stamped on them, it's nonsense. Float-test is the way to check. Your eggs will last way beyond the date stamped on them. If you keep your eggs in the fridge, use warm water to check. This will just make the eggs warm up a bit to room temperature and cook better.
3. Bacon or lardons is fine, the difference is subtle at best. If you're a vegetarian (or even if you're not), shitake mushrooms sliced thinly, 2-3mm, and fried in butter until crispy make a seriously delicious alternative.
4. Parmesan is best, but it's expensive. If you're really strapped for cash, use Grana Padana. Don't use cheddar(etc.), it won't work properly as the fat content is wrong, and you'll end up with lumps, plus it doesn't taste right. Don't buy pre-grated parmesan cos it's a) shit, you might as well use sawdust b) about 4 times the price per kilo of a lump. £15-£18 per kilo is probably the cheapest you'll find parmesan lumps.

Summary:

1. Cook pasta
2. Add whisked eggs to hot pasta
3. Add parmesan and bits of fried bacon

You see, that's really easy. Now for a bit more detail.

How to make it:

1. Boil a load of water in the kettle. Loads.
2. Get your heaviest saucepan. I use a cast iron, fake Le Creuset casserole dish. The heaviness is important, as you need to hold heat in the metal. More weight = more heat (not temperature though).
3. Pour all the boiling water in to your heavy pan and add some salt. Bring it to the boil.
4. Once the water is boiling and not before, add your pasta and cook for the length of time it says on the packet. Use a timer, the packet doesn't lie. Don't cook it to a mush. Spaghetti in tins is not the right consistency. You should need to use your teeth to eat it, rather than just your tongue.
5. Whilst the pasta is cooking, crack the eggs into a bowl and whisk them with a bit of ground black pepper). Grate the parmesan onto a plate or something. Fry the pancetta/bacon.
6. When the pasta is cooked, drain off the water, quickly, and put the pasta back in to the still-hot pan.
7. Pour in the whisked eggs, quickly, and stir the pasta together with the eggs. This is the only difficult-ish bit, it's where the heat of the pan is important. The retained heat cooks the eggs very quickly, but shouldn't make them claggy (like scrambled eggs). Keep stirring until the eggs are cooked. If they still look like whisked eggs, with big bubbles in, then they're not cooked. If you're in doubt, or haven't used a particularly heavy pot, put the pan on a very low heat and keep stirring. You want it to have the consistency of cream. As soon as it looks creamy, take it off the heat. This is why crappy recipes have cream in. They make you cook the eggs too much and add cream to get the right texture. You are a good enough cook not to need cream. Don't tell me you're not.
8. Once you got the eggs bit right, add the parmesan and mix it all in, then add your fried bits of pancetta/bacon/mushroom.
9. Put it on a plate and eat it. Maybe grate a little more parmesan on top, and grind some pepper onto it. If you're feeling generous, share with a friend.

Notes:

Don't try to cook too much of this at once. It gets difficult to coat all the pasta with egg, and make sure it's all cooked. I'd suggest cooking for 2 or 3 at the most. Also, the pan gets too full, and it's just a chore to do.

The first time you cook this, just make it for yourself.

If you do end up with claggy eggs, don't worry too much, just try again next time. Claggy eggs just aren't great texturewise. 

If you don't understand something, leave a comment, or email me. It's not difficult, so I've probably just not explained well.