The best Spaghetti Carbonara

Tell the truth. Have you eaten more very good Spaghetti alla Carbonara in your lifetime, or more so-so?

That's what I figured. If ever a dish proved that simple recipes are the most difficult to prepare, this one is it.

Carbonara is one of my top go-to meals, and so I figure it's about time I shared it here. The recipe is from David Downie's "Cooking the Roman Way." It's a reliable, honest, authentic Roman preparation, and I've been using it for several years now.

Best of all it isn't at all so-so. Give it a shot, you'll see.

You start out with a nice piece of pancetta (this is my homemade stuff), guanciale or even bacon if you prefer.

Dice it all up so's to fry it in olive oil.

Mix together some grated Pecorino Romano cheese, a good hit of freshly ground pepper, three eggs, and an egg yolk.

Here's the part that is most important (the full recipe is below). The egg and cheese mixture is added to the cooked pancetta, but only after the pan has been allowed to cool for three minutes.

You can see that the pan isn't hot enough to cook the eggs, but it does allow for just enough of a head start on the cooking.

As soon as the pasta is cooked it's added to the warm pan with all the other ingredients.

This is when the combination of the hot pasta and the already-warmed ingredients allows things to actually become cooked. (If it remains uncooked after stirring, turn on the heat and keep stirring, but only briefly; otherwise the eggs will scramble.)

Here's how a proper Carbonara should look, as far as I'm concerned anyway.

And I'm concerned an awful lot.

Spaghetti alla Carbonara
Recipe
Adapted from "Cooking the Roman Way" by David Downie

4 ounces pancetta, guanciale or bacon (I use a little more)
2 Tbsp extra-virgin olive oil
4 large eggs, at room temperature
2 Tbsp freshly grated Pecorino Romano (I use twice that amount)
Freshly ground black pepper
Kosher salt or coarse sea salt (I use regular salt)
1 lb. spaghetti
1 cup freshly grated cheese, half Parmigiano-Reggiano, half Pecorino Romano

Bring at least 5 quarts of water to a boil in a large pot.
Roughly chop the pancetta, guanciale or bacon. You should have about 3/4 of a cup. (I use about a cup.)
Heat the oil in a very large, high-sided frying pan over medium. Add the pork and stir, sautéing until crisp. Turn off the heat under the frying pan and let it cool for 3 minutes.
Separate one of the eggs. Put the yolk in a small mixing bowl and save the white for other uses. Crack the remaining 3 eggs into the mixing bowl and beat thoroughly, incorporating 2 heaping tablespoons of Pecorino Romano and an extremely generous pinch of black pepper. Pour the mixture into the warm frying pan and stir.
Add a pinch of salt to the boiling water (I use lots of salt to cook pasta, not just a pinch). Drop the pasta, stir and cover the pot. When the water returns to a boil remove the lid and cook, uncovered, until the pasta is barely al dente.
Drain the pasta and transfer it immediately to the frying pan with the egg mixture. Stir vigorously until thoroughly coated. Cover the frying pan and let stand for 1 minute.
Serve with a peppermill and a bowl of Parmigiano-Reggiano and Pecorino Romano on the side.

The (not so) great cocoa caper

I've done a lot of things that I'm not proud of. Some were meanspirited, others unkind, several idiotic, many blatantly unlawful and dangerous.

But how do you explain robbing from the church, in the dead of night, just to get a fix? Worse, being pinched in the act by a nun with good vision, a strong moral compass and a very bad case of insomnia.

What kind of word is there for a thing like that?

The addiction I struggle with is not to drugs or alcohol, but to cocoa. Leave a fine chocolate, particularly a very dark fine chocolate, unattended and don't come crying to me when it vanishes. Well, you could come crying to me, I suppose. Just don't expect me to give a good goddamn.

If it's chocolate, I don't care if you brought it, paid for it, or made it beneath your ancient Tuscan villa using the finest Criollo beans: If I'm anywhere in the vicinity then the chocolate is mine, not yours. So get over it.

Such was also my harsh position on that cold, dark night during my sixteenth year when I and several pals broke into a Catholic elementary school and cleaned it out of thousands of dollars' worth of World's Finest chocolate bars.

Yes, those World's Finest chocolate bars. The ones that schools and churches and community groups and daycare centers and other earnest institutions have long relied upon to raise much needed funds for many worthy causes.

I said I wasn't proud, remember?

It may be worth mentioning that we had not set out to steal anything from anybody, least of all the parish where we ourselves were reared. What's more, there wasn't an awfully bad seed among our group. We were teenagers hanging out in the schoolyard, that's all. But it was cold enough outside that when I accidentally discovered an unlocked door at the school's side entrance we all agreed that warming ourselves inside the furnace room was preferable to making a night of it and going home.

And that's all we had in mind, I swear.

Of course, it wasn't very long before things took another turn. Soon we were inside the storage area where the crates of chocolate were being stored, busy designing an efficient way to extricate them from the premises. Inside an hour my five associates and I had relocated all the chocolates to a new storage facility around a hundred yards away and in the basement of the apartment building of one of our crewmembers, confident that the night's score was very big and the coast, as they say, very clear. To celebrate we cracked open one of the cases, went out onto the sidewalk and started to devour our treasure and calculate the total street value of our haul.

But then, out from the blackness of the fenced-in schoolyard, appeared the all too familiar figure of a woman whose appearance could only mean one thing: We got caught.

Her name was Sister Miriam. She had been the second-grade teacher to many neighborhood people over the years, including me and others in our nighttime crew. A big woman, Miriam was not known to be at all unkind, and in that way she differed from at least a few of her fellow sisters. But 1 a.m. is not the time you want to see the imposing frame of even the most benevolent nun — attired in full habit no less — staring down at you. Certainly not when your mouth is filled with purloined chocolate from the very parish that she herself so devotedly serves.

"Louis," she called out, addressing one of the members of our crew. "Would you come over here, please?"

These were the only words the rest of us heard the nun utter about the evening's events. And I doubt she discussed it with Lou for more than a minute, because no sooner had he walked over to her that she disappeared back into the darkness and he was back telling us what was what.

Turns out that the sister, unable to sleep, had witnessed the entire caper from her convent window. She saw the white cardboard cases being carried out the side entrance, run across the schoolyard, tossed up onto a garage roof in order to exit the fenced-in yard, tossed back down from the roof and into a side alley, and then (this she could not see due to her field of vision, I am sure) shuttled across a couple of backyards and then down into the chosen basement for final storage.

"Why the hell didn't she come out sooner?" I snarled, polishing off what turned out to be my last World's Finest chocolate bar for some time. "She could've saved us all a lot of trouble."

Which, as it turned out, was the sister's point. The deal she struck with my friend Lou was this: We put the chocolate bars back where they belong and nobody ever hears about the matter again. The boxes had to be brought back immediately, though, which made for an awfully long night for us all.

Recently I received a note from my old friend Lou.

"I just visited the actual site this past Memorial Day, and pointed out to my mother and daughter the exact spot where Sr. Miriam stood," Lou wrote. There was no need to clarify which "site" he meant; I knew.

"This was a pivotal moment in my life because I quickly realized a life of crime was not for me," he went on. "And it was the first time I was able to tell my mom about it."

Then Lou reminded me of something that made me about as ashamed of my cocoa addiction as ever I have been.

"Remember, she paid for the chocolate bars that went 'missing.' And never told a soul about it. As far as I know."

Tomato salad on a friselle

Go ahead and be patient if you like. But as soon as the tomato plants went into the ground last week I became mighty restless dreaming about the summer's first fresh tomato salad, which is still a good couple months away.

To make matters worse I had just schlepped home the perfect accompaniment to such a salad, these friselle from an Arthur Avenue baker in the Bronx.

And so I headed over to the store, grabbed the best-looking on-the-vine tomatoes that I could find, chopped them up with a little red onion, balsamic, olive oil, basil, salt and pepper, and had at it.

Patience is an overrated virtue.

Best. Swordfish. Ever.

I don't do all the cooking around here, you know.

Sometimes I get to sit back, blurt out a request, and hope like hell that somebody with better cooking skills than me is within earshot.

This really swell bunch of Sicilian oregano (gotten on a visit to D. Coluccio & Sons) is what started things off just the other day.

Then, moments later, while at Frank & Sal, these beautiful fresh bay leaves sealed the deal for sure.

I have sat back and watched this wonderful Sicilian-style swordfish recipe being expertly prepared many, many times. Right here in my own home.

It's my favorite way to eat sword.

And not because I get the night off when it's on the menu.

Sicilian-style swordfish
Adapted from "La Cucina Siciliana di Gangivecchio"
Prepared (always) by my most valued associate

Serves 4-6

1/4 cup olive oil
2 swordfish steaks, skin on, cut at least 1-inch thick and up to 2 inches thick
12 bay leaves, preferably fresh
Juice of 1 lemon
Salt and freshly ground pepper to taste
Dried fine bread crumbs, mixed with 1 tablespoon crumbled dried oregano

Preheat oven to 450 degrees F.
Brush the bottom of a large, shallow baking dish with olive oil. Place the bay leaves in the bottom of the dish and lay the swordfish on top, tucking the bay leaves under the fish.
Pierce the fish deeply with the tines of a fork, making about 10 evenly spaced incisions in each steak. Drizzle with olive oil and lemon juice. Sprinkle with salt and pepper and then the bread crumbs. Drizzle again with olive oil.
Roast for 15-25 minutes, depending upon the thickness, until done. Remove, let rest for 10 minutes, and serve.

Sunday's stuffed artichoke

Had you been raised in la famiglia di Signor Polpetta (you're smart, figure it out), this would be more than just the familiar sight of a classic Italian-American antipasto.

It would be a small but not unimportant slice of Home. Because Sunday supper, the best family time of all, rarely took place without the stuffed artichokes.

We did not eat ours at the beginning of the multi-course meal, however. For us the artichokes were for later on, after we had started to digest the pasta and the meatballs, the roasted chicken and the veal cutlets, often even after the pastries and the coffee and the finocchio crudo (raw fennel, but you knew that). More often than not, in fact, the artichokes were eaten well after we had left the table and moved on to other things.

They were their own separate thing, these stuffed artichokes, meant for picking at when the mood struck, and so everybody didn't eat them at the same time. They'd be had while on the sofa watching an afternoon ballgame, in the backyard playing cards, even sitting on the front stoop just before nightfall. There were plenty of Sundays where I didn't get around to eating my allotted 'choke until bedtime, standing in the kitchen or in front of the t.v. set or just gazing out the window to see what was happening on the street.

But I always got around to having one.

Stuffed artichokes aren't meant to be eaten hot from the oven, you know. And do not zap them in the microwave either. Room temperature is the way to go here. Make them, leave them out on the kitchen counter, and when the mood strikes go and have at it.

Trust me on this. I've had lots of practice.

Me and the stuffed stuff go way back.

Much as I love the stems, they must be cut from the bottoms so that the artichoke can sit flat in a pan. (I trim the stems and cook them along with the artichokes, then hope like hell that nobody else has their eye on them.)

This next step really does require a sharp knife, so please make sure to use one. Basically you're making a crosscut on the top so that you can get inside the artichoke to fill it with the stuffing.

This is what goes into the stuffing: breadcrumbs, cheese, pignoli (pine nuts), parsley, garlic, salt and pepper. Once you mix them all together you must add olive oil, but only enough to lightly bind it, otherwise it will be too oily.

I guarantee that when you look at the amount of stuffing you've prepared it will seem like way too much for just a couple of large artichokes. Thing is, it takes patience to stuff them properly, and if you are patient you will use up the stuffing mix. One at a time peel back each layer of leaves and begin cramming the stuffing down along the leaves and all the way around, until you've completed all the layers. This is not the time to be delicate, okay. Raw artichokes are tough as nails, so don't worry about hurting them.

After they've been fully stuffed place the artichokes in a baking dish filled with about an inch of water, drizzle a little olive oil over them, cover with aluminum foil and toss into the oven preheated to 375 degrees F.

Artichokes are funny things, and I find cooking times will often vary wildly. The best thing to do is yank out a leaf after about an hour in the oven and see if it's cooked enough. These large artichokes were ready after 1 hour and 20 minutes in the oven. Then I left them out, still covered in the foil, until they cooled to room temperature. (Doing this allows the flesh to soften a little more too.)

And there you go, a properly stuffed artichoke for you and yours.

No Sunday supper should be without it.

Stuffed Artichokes
Recipe
Makes 2 large artichokes or 4 small ones

1 cup good breadcrumbs
1/2 cup grated Pecorino Romano cheese (loosely packed)
1/4 cup raw pignoli (pine nuts)
1 garlic clove, chopped
2 Tbsp. fresh parsley, chopped
1/2 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. freshly ground pepper
Extra virgin olive oil (enough to lightly bind ingredients)

Preheat oven to 375 degrees F.
In a bowl mix together all the ingredients.
Remove stems so that artichokes can lay flat in a pan, then make a crosscut at the artichoke tip to reveal its inner leaves.
Stuff the mixture into as many rows of inner leaves as you can, until all the filling is used up.
Place artichokes in a baking pan with an inch of water, drizzle just a touch of olive oil over each artichoke, cover with aluminum foil and bake for about an hour. Pull out a leaf to test for doneness; more time may be required.
Remove pan from the oven and leave it loosely covered in foil until artichokes come to room temperature and serve.

Cannellini puree with bottarga

You are looking at one top-drawer appetizer here, folks. And easy to make? Please.

It's beans that have been sauteed in garlic.

Pulverized in the blender.

And topped with olive oil and a little freshly grated bottarga.

It's served as a dip with a nice crusty bread.

What more is there to say?

Cannellini Puree with Grated Bottarga
Recipe
Adapted from "Seafood alla Siciliana" by Toni Lydecker

Extra-virgin olive oil
1 garlic clove (I used more than that)
2 cups cooked cannellini or chickpeas (add an onion and a bay leaf to the water or stock when cooking, then discard)
1/4 cup reserved bean cooking liquid, plus more as needed
1/2 tsp. sea salt or kosher salt
2 tsp. grated bottarga

Saute the garlic in the olive oil until soft, then add the beans, cooking liquid and salt and heat through.
Transfer to a blender or food processor and puree until smooth, adding more cooking liquid as needed. (Consistency should be a bit thicker than a thick soup.)
Transfer to a bowl, drizzle with olive oil, top with bottarga and serve with bread.

Pepperoni & eggs

It's growing on me.

Until last weekend I had never eaten an egg with pepperoni mixed into it. In fact, I rarely eat anything with pepperoni in it, on it, or even near it.

America's Number One pizza topping just doesn't do it for me. It never did.

But while going through a list of favorite childhood foods that friends helped me to compile recently, this one showed up under a category termed "comfort foods." It was passed along to me by my friend Joe and I must admit to being a little surprised by its inclusion. Joe and I are around the same age, have similar food tastes, and are proud products of the same social condition: Italian-American neighborhoods in Brooklyn.

And yet I had never heard of pepperoni & eggs, let alone tasted it.

"What is it about the combo that works?" Joe pondered in his notes. "Salt and sweet? Smooth and chewy? A mystery of life."

"Haven't had it in a while," my friend added. "Should do something about that."

Long story short, he didn't, but I did. I have prepared pepperoni & eggs twice since Saturday (aka Derby Day, at least this year), once for breakfast and once for lunch. To do this, I needed to go out and buy some pepperoni, which got me wondering whether I had even done such a thing before.

If you are a fan of the pepperoni then this has got to be a must-try. If you are not a fan, it might still be worth a one-off, as it is nothing if not filled with flavor.

Me? There's still enough of the spicy sliced stuff left in the fridge to make two, maybe three more servings. After that I'll decide whether Joe and I are on the same page with this "comfort food" of his.

I'm beginning to lean in that direction, but the morning line still shows even odds.