Ingredients:
400g spaghetti
2 eggs
150g mature cheese (parmesan, manchego, etc.)
120g bacon
salt and pepper
a small splash of olive oil
1-Put a handful of salt (a lot) in plenty of boiling water. Then add the spaghetti and let it cook for about 10 minutes until it is al dente. It is advisable to stir it frequently, especially at the beginning of cooking, so that it does not stick together.
2-While it is cooking, prepare the carbonara. In a bowl, add the egg yolks. It is better to save the egg white for another preparation because, if we add it, it will look more like a spaghetti omelette than a real sauce. But if you don’t mind, you can add it. We also add the grated cheese and mix both ingredients with a fork. There will be a kind of very thick dough and this will be the carbonara.
3-In a pan we put a drizzle of oil. When it is very hot, add the pancetta or bacon cut into fairly small cubes. After a couple of minutes, when they are fried, remove them from the heat and set them aside.
4-Once this is done and when the spaghetti is cooked, set aside a few ladles of cooking broth. Then we drain the spaghetti from the rest of the broth.
5-Without delay, since it will be the residual heat of the spaghetti that will cook the carbonara, we pour the pasta into the bowl where we had prepared it. Add the pancetta, with any sauce that may have released and a little cooking broth. Mix everything well with a fork so that the spaghetti absorb all the sauce. If you see that it is very thick, you can add more cooking broth, until you obtain a very creamy sauce (do not forget to mix everything vigorously. The pasta is very porous and absorbs the sauce relatively easily. But it must be mixed to help this process)
6-Finally, when we have reached the desired creaminess of the sauce, sprinkle with plenty of freshly ground black pepper. It is said that the name “carbonara” comes from the color that this spice gives it, which resembles the color of coal. Serve immediately
