Carbonara

Carbonara(Italian:[karboˈnaːra]) is apastadish made withfattycuredpork,hard cheese,eggs, salt, and black pepper.It is typical of theLazioregion ofItaly. The dish took its modern form and name in the middle of the 20th century.
The cheese is usuallypecorino romano. Some variations useParmesan,Grana Padano, or a combination of cheeses.Spaghettiis the most common pasta, butbucatiniorrigatoniare also used. Whileguanciale, a cured porkjowl, is traditional, some variations usepancetta,andlardonsof smokedbaconare a common substitute outside Italy.
As with many recipes, the origins of the dish and its name are obscure;most sources trace its origin to the region of Lazio.
The dish forms part of a family of dishes consisting of pasta with cured pork, cheese, and pepper, one of which ispasta alla gricia. It is very similar topasta cacio e uova, a dish dressed with meltedlardand a mixture of eggs and cheese, but not meat or pepper.Cacio e uovais documented as far back as 1839 and, according to researchers, anecdotal evidence indicates that some Italians born before World War II associate that name with the dish now known as "carbonara".
There are many theories for the origin of the namecarbonara, which is probably more recent than the dish itself.There is no good evidence for any of them:
The namespasta alla carbonaraandspaghetti alla carbonaraare unrecorded before theSecond World War; notably, it is absent fromAda Boni's 1930La cucina romana(lit.'Roman cuisine').The 1931 edition of the Guide of Italy of theTCIdescribes a pasta (strascinati) dish fromCasciaandMonteleone di Spoleto, in Umbria, whose sauce contains whipped eggs, sausage, and pork fat and lean, which could be considered as a precursor of carbonara, although it does not contain any cheese.
The namecarbonarafirst appears in print in 1950, when the Italian newspaperLa Stampadescribed it as aRoman dishsought out by American officers after theAlliedliberation of Romein 1944.
According to one hypothesis,a youngItalian Armycook named Renato Gualandi created the dish in 1944, with other Italian cooks, as part of a dinner for the U.S. Army, because the Americans "had fabulous bacon, very good cream, some cheese and powdered egg yolks".
Food writer Alan Davidson and food blogger and historian Luca Cesari have both stated that carbonara was born in Rome around 1944, just after the liberation of the city, probably because of the bacon that flowed in quantity with the U.S. Army.Cesari adds that the dish is mentioned inan Italian movie from 1951,while the first attested recipe is in an illustrated cookbookpublished in Chicago in 1952 by Patricia Bronté.According to Cesari, the recipe was probably brought to the United States by an American serviceman who had passed through Rome during theItalian campaignor by an Italian American who had met it in Rome;this makes carbonara a dish that closely links Italy and the United States, according to Cesari.The controversial Italian academic and professorAlberto Grandialso said that carbonara's first attested recipe is American, citing Cesari, a claim that has been criticized in Italy.According to Grandi, the dish was created by Americans living in Italy after World War II.
In 1954, the first recipe for carbonara published in Italy appeared inLa Cucina Italianamagazine, although the recipe featuredpancetta, garlic, andGruyère cheese.The same year, carbonara was included inElizabeth David'sItalian Food, an English-language cookbook published in Great Britain.
The pasta is cooked in boiling water salted only moderately, due to the saltiness of the cured meat and thehard cheese. The meat is briefly fried in a pan in its own fat.A mixture of raw eggs (or yolks), grated cheese, and a liberal amount of ground black pepper is combined with the hot pasta either in the pasta pot or in a serving dish orbain-marie,but away from direct heat, to avoidcurdlingthe egg.The fried meat is then added and the mixture is tossed, creating a rich, creamy sauce with bits of meat spread throughout.Various shapes of pasta can be used, almost always dried durum wheat pasta.
Guancialeis the most commonly used meat for the dish in Italy, but pancetta andpancetta affumicataare also usedand, in English-speaking countries, bacon is often used as a substitute.The usual cheese ispecorino romano;occasionallyParmesan,Grana Padano, or a combination of hard cheeses are used.Recipes differ as to which part of the egg is used—some use the whole egg, some others only the yolk, and still others a mixture.The amount of eggs used also vary, but the intended result is a creamy sauce from mild heating.For vegetarians, there are also recipes that utilize mushrooms and vegetables instead of meat.
Some preparations have more sauce and therefore use tubular pasta, such aspenne, which is better suited to holding sauce.Cream is not used in most Italian recipes,with some notable exceptions from the 20th century.However, it is often employed in other countries,as adding cream makes the dish more stable.Similarly, garlic is found in some recipes, but mostly outside Italy.Outside Italy, variations on carbonara may include green peas, broccoli,tenderstem broccoli, leeks, onions,other vegetables or mushrooms,and may substitute a meat such ashamorcoppafor thefattierguanciale or pancetta.
A variant ispasta alla carbonara di mare, a seafood dish widespread in Lazio, Tuscany, particularly in Viareggio, and on the Riviera Romagnola.
Since neither guanciale nor bacon is allowed for Muslims and Jews, these are replaced in carbonara either by using a different type of meat (such as turkey bacon,jerkyorbiltong) that are not made from pork, and can behalalorkosher, or with non-meat alternatives (such as zucchini or mushrooms); thus the dish can become a halal or kosher variant.
A product described as carbonara sauce is sold as a ready-to-eatconvenience foodingrocery storesin many countries. Unlike the original preparation, which is inseparable from its dish as its creamy texture is created on the pasta itself, theultra-processedversions of carbonara are prepared sauces to be applied onto separately cooked pasta.They may be thickened with cream and sometimesfood starch, and often use bacon or cubed pancetta slices instead of guanciale.