The Curse of Round Two

Carbonara is one of my favorite dishes. Honestly, what's not to like? It's savory, creamy, and can hold some spice. It's crispy, fatty pork mixed into perfectly toothy pasta noodles in a creamy, velvety egg and cheese sauce. Also there's black pepper and don't you forget it.

I'm not married to the authentic carbonara recipe. Sometimes I mix it up. I really like it with seared mushrooms, caramelized onions, spinach, peas, red pepper flakes or even crispy garlic which is what I added this time around.

I remember the first time I had carbonara. I was a young teenager and my mother tasked me with making the weekly menu, writing out the grocery list, and helping shop for said groceries. To write out the menu, I browsed the dozen Home and Garden Recipe books that were a staple in our house and found this recipe called "Hurry Up Ham Carbonara" in the blue issue that used angel hair pasta. I was obsessed with angel hair pasta. In fact, anytime I went to olive garden, I would ask the server to swap in angel hair pasta for the other pasta in whatever dish I ordered.

Anyway, I added the carbonara to the menu. I helped my mom make it, we ate it, it was delicious. A couple weeks passed and I requested we eat it again, but I was going to make it by myself this time. I was a pretty confident young cook at the time and I was very excited to make my favorite dish all on my own.

Before I go into this, there's something important to understand: the sauce. The sauce is made of eggs, parmesan cheese and pepper whisked together. The just-cooked pasta noodles are added to the pan with the crispy pork, the heat is turned off, and the egg and cheese mixture is quickly and vigorously stirred into the pasta. The goal is to cook the eggs with the residual heat while NOT scrambling the eggs. The end result is a velvety, smooth, cheesy egg sauce.

Now that we have that down....

I'm making this dish for the second-ish time. Everything is going well and I'm down to my last step which is finishing the sauce. For reasons unknown to me, I crank the heat up and move the noodles and pork to the sides of the pan to make a gigantic well in the center of the pan. I pour the egg and cheese mixture in and start stirring. A cheesy egg scramble is formed, I make sure it's dispersed evenly throughout the dish. I top with parmesan and parsley and serve it to my family.

Scrambled eggs. Scrambled eggs and noodles with pork bits throughout. That's what I served to my family.

Honestly, they were so kind and I don't remember them even pointing out to me that I served them noodles with scrambled eggs. Everyone ate it and moved on with their lives and eventually I learned how to make a decent carbonara.

But this was just the start of what we call the curse of round two. The first time I make something, it's delicious and then the second time I make it, it's a flunk. This is a real thing for me even to this day.

Anyway, carbonara. It's delicious, relatively easy to make and is a family favorite. My 3 year old tells me "These are good noodles. I like them" ....which is huge since he's quite a picky eater. A family friend that lived with us a few months called it "Calamari" and requested it often.

There's so many recipes on Pinterest for this. I normally eyeball what I do so I don't have a particular recipe to share. If you try it out, let me know what you think! Or if you have a favorite recipe, leave a link in the comments!

Sam