A few weeks ago I mentioned how I’d like to cook something new to me from each month’s issue of Bon Appetit. I have yet to cook something from the December issue, but I did do the brisket chili on the cover of November’s issue.
January’s issue has already arrived, and the “dish of the year” on the cover was fettuccine carbonara with pancetta and fried egg. Carbonara is a traditional Italian dish of pasta with egg, cheese, and a cured meat like pancetta or guanciale. Bon Appetit gave this a different spin by adding broccoli rabe and a fried egg on top of the whole dish. I’ve never made anything like this and was excited to give it a try.
Below I have two kinds of parmesan cheese, garlic, black pepper, and egg, which all got whisked up.
Then I fried up some pancetta. They said to chop it finely, but I wish it had been more of a rough chop so I had ended up with larger pieces of pancetta. The pancetta is domestic, and fairly affordable. You can get it at many grocery stores; I got it at Whole Foods for $7 for a half lb. Below is about half of what I purchased. The rest has been used in breakfast eggs and as a pizza topping.
The pasta was cooked until it was about 2 minutes away from being done, then I added the broccoli rabe to the pot.
Mixing it all up, and adding some black pepper. The heat from the pasta cooks the egg mixture.
Frying the eggs in the reserved pancetta fat.
Plated.
It was pretty good stuff and was fun to try. A few things I would do different next time:
- Fresh pasta would have been much better. I was too lazy I guess.
- More pancetta, roughly chopped
- More broccoli rabe.
- A little less egg and a bit more cheese in the egg/cheese mixture
This was fun to try though; I really liked the egg on top, and the texture of the dish, the bitterness of the rabe, and the salty/savory goodness of the pancetta was good stuff and I am glad this was added to my repertoire.
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