Love is Bacon and Eggs for Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner

I come from a long line of women who cook with such confidence, it borders on defiance in following a recipe.  I can’t say that I don’t follow recipes, as I most certainly do.  But I have to admit that my favorite times in the kitchen are those when I am cooking the dishes that I know so intrinsically, using the recipe would only cause me to second guess myself.  This dish, a comforting amalgamation of fatty bacon and oozy eggs and cheese, is one I always love the best when made without a recipe.  I just know it’s going to be good by the feel of working with the ingredients that are in front of me.

Carbonara, for me, isn’t determined by the standard laundry list of ingredients (pasta, eggs, pancetta, parmasean, and a healthy dose of black pepper) so much as the proportions.  I like mine as gloriously lux as possible – comfort food at its finest – which means that I’ll be a bit of an ingredient snob in order to get it just right.  Ironically enough, this dish still manages to be one that I seem to be able to make at any time – I always have the ingredients lying around the fridge.  Maybe that’s the appeal – so easy to make, but insanely full of panache and class.  All cooking should have results such as these. Continue reading Pasta Carbonara →