Rome's Spaghetti alla Carbonara - At Home

Last weekend, Significant Eater asked me to make her Spaghetti Cacio e Pepe for lunch. I wasn't in the mood to cook and we ended up going to Chinatown for noodles, since I knew that would make her happy.  This past weekend, however, I took matters into my own hands - and instead of Cacio e Pepe, I decided to go full bore and cook up what is one of the great pasta dishes of all time -  Spaghetti alla Carbonara. There are restaurants in Rome which are dedicated to this classic and all it takes is a few simple ingredients I always have in my pantry.  Pasta. Olive Oil. Pancetta (or guanciale). Eggs. Pecorino Cheese. Pepper. (Yes, there's water and salt involved too, but really...)

There's much hand-wringing about how to make a proper Carbonara.  And the more you read about it, the more  wringing you'll do. For instance, Emeril has a recipe using bacon, garlic and parsley (freakin' heathen), while Saveur Magazine's "classic" recipe includes garlic and parsley (again), and white wine. WTF?!

Arthur Schwartz, the author of a great book about cooking in Campania, Naples at Table, doesn't even bother to include a recipe, though it's not like Rome and Naples are different countries.

Mario (yes, that Mario), in his 1998 book Simple Italian Food, has a recipe for Carbonara that includes cream.  But in Molto Italiano, his 2005 award-winning tome, here's what he had to say about Spaghetti alla Carbonara:

A true carbonara has no cream...

And that Molto recipe gets all fancy, as it has you build a nest on each plate of pasta, into which you then drop the egg yolk and the diner gets to toss it all around.  Isn't life difficult enough?

In any event, the most important rule about making Carbonara is to NOT scramble the eggs when pulling this dish together.  I know, I know...you're saying to yourself: "That shouldn't be a problem; I can't even scramble an egg!"

Well, eggs are touchy - a little too much heat...scrambled eggs. 

So be careful when you make your Carbonara.  You can take a cue from the great Roman cookbook called, strangely enough, Cooking the Roman Way, which instructs you to make sure you cool the pan off for 3 minutes before adding the eggs and then the cooked pasta.  The pan, by the way, is the pan in which you cook up the pancetta with olive oil...

You can temper your eggs by adding a little bit (say 1/4 cup) of the pasta cooking water to the beaten eggs before adding them to that pan. You can keep your fingers crossed, like I do.  And if you're lucky, and your Carbonara comes out perfectly, you can sit back and enjoy, like we did this past weekend, a nice lunch of Spaghetti alla Carbonara - it's one of the great pasta dishes of all time...

Happy Birthday/Anniversary To...Acme

Happy Birthday, Acme.  Or maybe it should be Happy Anniversary?  In any event, Acme has been open for just about a year;  it was last January when I wrote about how much we'd enjoyed our first 3 or 4 meals during those early days.

Then, over the next 12 months, Significant Eater and I enjoyed any number of delicious meals, both as walk-ins sitting at the bar, or with ressies and sitting in the bustling dining room.  Other friends who joined me/us enjoyed it mightily, and people I implored to try it usually qvelled.  So I jumped at the opportunity when a friend asked if I'd like to hit Acme for dinner again last night.

While in its infancy there might have been a dish that needed a more careful hand with the seasoning, or a snafu in the timing of the dishes coming out of the kitchen, I'm happy to report that there is none of that now.  Every dish we ate last night was properly seasoned (i.e. salted), and the service was great...as a matter of fact, I think that the service (which, imo, was never off) has become a bit more formal, while still retaining that casual vibe.

While a good part of the menu remains from the "early days," a couple of new dishes made themselves known. One of these was the duck ebelskivers. I actually know what ebelskivers are (a long story involving the California city of Solvang); here, Chef Mads Refslund has taken a sweet and turned into a savory, the puffs filled with duck confit; served alongside - pear chutney for dipping.  And what looks like the traditional powdered sugar on top is now dried and powdered vinegar...what you see isn't always what you get.

Probably the most talked about dish when Acme opened was the Pearl Barley with Clams, a big bowl of barley swimming in roasted sunflower broth, with scallops and artichokes along for the ride. Who used grains like this?  Well, fast forward a year, and now we're getting a dish called simply Whole Grains. But are we sad? No - because the grains still include pearl barley (along with wheat berries). Oh, it also has a nice assortment of mushrooms and comes topped with 3 puffs of parmesan froth, making it one of the earthiest, most delicious things I've tasted since, well, Pearl Barley with Clams...

Roasted beets are garnished with pickled huckleberries, adding a nice kick to that winter standby.  Everyone's favorite Chicken and Eggs dish is as good as the first time you tasted it...nicely moist chicken (I'd love to see them use thighs and wings, though that might be a bit much for this crowd) and fingerling potatoes just waiting to be drenched by those fried eggs and their creamy yolks. And the Beer and Bread Porridge with salted caramel ice cream?  Yes, please.

The wines by the glass list has grown to no less than 15 selections.  I was busy quaffing a Grüner (which I learned to love at Cafe Katja), after a nice glass of complimentary champagne from the house.

Acme continues to be one of my favorite spots for a nice meal.  Sit at the bar and have a couple of snacks, or one of those decadent desserts. Sit at a table and have a big meal.  You won't go wrong with either. And if you haven't been to Acme, what are you waiting for?  Before you know it, they'll be 2 years old - and you know how 2 year-olds can be, don't you?

Remember Paris?

I think of vacations as happening in 3 stages:  waiting to go on vacation; being on vacation; and then remembering the vacation. The wait seems so long; the vacation seems so short; and then, after it's over, it seems like it was so long ago.

Now that I've gotten that out of the way, Significant Eater and I had a quite wonderful time in Paris a few weeks ago. We arrived on a Sunday afternoon, and were on our way back home the following Saturday.  Here's a bit of what transpired...

There's a fabulous producer's market that takes place in the city one weekend a year; we wanted to be there within an hour after checking into our apartment, which had this right outside the door...

Reaching our destination...

This wild mushroom pancake knocked us out...

The choice of foie, confit and all sorts of canned and cured products is amazing...

 The onion peelers reminded me of a few famous potato peelers...

While the snake-oil salesmen were probably not too happy that I was taking their picture...

Sig Eater and I ended up happy we took the trek...

And our small haul made for some good snacks over the next day or two...

You'd think that after all that we wouldn't be hungry for dinner...but then you'd be wrong.  Actually, we did wait a few hours before setting out for Sunday dinner at a bistro in the 10th, Le Verre Volé.  The staff is charming and gracious. You pick what you want from the carte, and they'll help with your wine selection, as it's a wine shop too.  We started out with a nice shellfish plate...

The pigeon appetizer was delicious as well; we shared the plat of juicy pork, with pommes purée and rainbow chard as a main course...

No meal in Paris is complete for Significant Eater without the cheese course, and this one didn't disappoint, all melty and stinky...

Now here's a satisfied customer after dinner...

After a meal like that, we decided to walk back to the apartment, which took us over the Canal St. Martin, one of the more beautiful sights in Paris...

And at the end of our first day in Paris, it was nice to come back to an apartment with this view from the living room window...

Le Verre Volé
67 Rue de Lancry, 10th
331 48 03 17 34