Here's some shocking news for all of you: me and Mr. C, we be poor. I mean, we're rich in a lot of other things, but in the bank account- not so much... which actually doesn't make us very different from many other people nowadays. I think I've written before that someday I look forward to a time when we don't have to choose monthly between getting our car serviced or going on a date night. Or buying the kids shoes and having a date night. Or feeding the animals and having a date night. You get the idea? For right now, that's how it is and we've found a way to make it okay. We just have date nights in. Yes, some people have staycations, me and Mr. C have stayte night.
Just kidding. We don't really call it that. That'd be terrible.
We don't call it anything but "give the kids chicken nuggets for dinner, put them to bed, make some really yummy food for ourselves and then watch Netflix on the couch" night. It works for us.
Since it's been a while since I've done a cooking post, and since Mr. C was hanging around the kitchen anyway while I cooked, I asked him to take some pictures for the blog. It was a little bumpy at first, because I had a preconceived vision for this post of which I had to try to relate to him while he just seemed mostly interested in taking pictures of the champagne bottle. But in the end it worked out okay.
Still not sure what he was trying to capture with all that.
So let's get started, shall we? This is a recipe for Pasta Carbonara. It's another Rachael Ray, the last recipe in her first cookbook, Cooking Round the Clock. She titled it "The Only Recipe You'll Ever Need". I'd like to amend that and call it "The Only Recipe You'll Ever Need If You're Planning on Clogging Your Arteries and Having a Heart Attack Before Middle Age". However, fattening as this recipe may be, it is deliriously delicious and perfect for a late night meal with your sweetie.
Here's the ingredients:
That's 1 package of rigatoni
1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
5-6 chopped garlic cloves
1/4 pound pancetta (chopped)
1 tsp. red pepper flakes
1/2 cup dry white wine (I used bubbly which was a little too dry, but whatev.)
2 large egg yolks
1 cup of Parmesan Romano Cheese
(Also, I do realize that the alignment above is a disaster, but after spending an hour messing around with the format in HTML form, I no longer care.)
(Actually, I do care, but only enough to let you know that I am aware of the problem. I don't care enough to spend any more time on trying to fix it.)
(And now I think I might have cared too much, because now I have three aside thoughts in a row explaining exactly how much I do and don't care.)
Anyway.
First things first: get a nice, big pot of salted water to boil.
Can I just stop for a moment to say that I think I'm going to permanently hire Mr. C to take pictures for any future cooking posts? I don't think I could have ever made boiling water look that cool with my little point and shoot camera.
Add the rigatoni and cook it for 8 minutes.
Okay. Now, in that 8 minutes, you have to cook everything up in your skillet fast so that it's ready to add to the hot pasta. So go! Go! There's no time to waste!
(Unless you're messing around with Rigatoni binoculars. Then it's okay to waste a little time.)
Heat up the olive oil in a large skillet and add then add the pancetta. Brown it for about 2 minutes.
Then add the garlic and the red pepper flakes.
Cook 2 or 3 minutes longer, then add the wine (or champagne) and stir it up with all the pan juices.
Mmmmmmm-mm-mm. Wish he had taken a better picture of that, because this one doesn't do much to help you understand how delicious the smell of the garlic cooking up in that wine sauce was. It was mouth watering.
So if you can tear your nose away from the skillet, take some time to look at the noodles. By now they should be pretty much done and you'll want to stir in your skillet stuff while the noodles are nice and piping hot. So listen up!
Take those eggs and separate them. Do whatever you want with the egg whites, but please PLEASE don't hurt the egg yolks.
(By the way, my egg separating skills are courtesy of Mrs. Rogers, my Jr. High home ec teacher, whom I wrote about here. Turns out I got more from her after all than just horror stories involving digestive juices inside of pudding.)
Dump those yolks into a bowl or measuring cup and beat 'em up real good. Then, before you drain the noodles, take about a 1/2 cup of the pasta cooking water and add it into your eggs. Then go ahead and lightly stir that together.
This is called "tempering the eggs". It keeps them from scrambling and ruining all your hard work.
Okay, now you can drain the pasta.
(I know you don't really need to see a picture of that, but again, I'm just really impressed with Mr. C's action shots. Look at that steam! I had to include. Sorry.)
Allrighty. Now is where you've got to MOVE. Take the drained noodles and dump them into the saucepan over the pancetta and garlic sauce. Then you pour the eggs over the noodles, and start mixing it all up like crazy. Make sure you toss that sauce over each and every noodle!
Then toss a handful (or two... or three.... oink) of the cheese and mix it in there real good, too.
Get it all melty-like, salt and pepper it, and then put some extra cheese on top right before you serve it.
Now, Rachael Ray writes that it's sexy to just eat it out of the saucepan with two forks. Go ahead and do that if you want. I wouldn't judge you. But Mr. C and I rarely get to eat like civilized folk, what with a table full of kids and all, so we set out plates all fancy like.
Then we enjoyed a quiet meal, in which no one interrupted us to complain about the food, or spill their beverage, or ask us how much more they had to eat before they could be done.
See? Just like date night, except cheap, fast, and easy. And yes, I realize I could take that last statement so many places, but since I've already slathered this post up with huge amounts of my dorkiness, I'll just go ahead and let it be.
You're very welcome.
Hope you all have a great day!
;)
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