What can one do with the fat that has been rendered from the guanciale? Also, how do I store it until I use it?

David Mitchell wrote:What can one do with the fat that has been rendered from the guanciale?

Make sorbet.

Seriously. Blend it with simple syrup and green apples. Worked great.

Edit: Ooooo... second thought, if you're rendering it with the garlic, that might be somewhat suboptimal for sorbet.

Dmnkly wrote:

I'm slightly faint at the thought of guanciale sorbet.

Is that......bacon....served with the bacon-fat sorbet?

I don't need my husband getting any ideas, okay?

Hi,

Last night I was at Bacio's in Highwood buying provisions before they close tomorrow to relocate and reopen in a few months.

The husband-owner was assisting a woman select ingredients for a recipe she had printed out. He commented to the customer, the recipe she was preparing had more ingredients than what he usually uses for the same. I didn't know the nature of the recipe, though the woman was enthusiastically asking for the best quality. I didn't interject, though I was really dead curious, and proceeded to the checkout.

It was my great fortune the only person who could check me out was the husband-owner. He interrupted his consultation to ring up my order. This brought the lady up front as well as my opportunity to find out what was exciting her. She presented me with a recipe from Rachel Ray's website on spaghetti Carbonara. I scanned the recipe to find garlic, crushed chilis and wine in the ingredient list. I told her these ingredients were not found in the classic Carbonara dish that the owner was pleased to affirm. I told her it is an inexpensive dish though a bit tricky for some, especially when integrating the eggs. She was already eliminating the garlic because she doesn't like it. Everything else she was ready to leave to Rachel Ray's recommendation. She did query about how thick or thin to slice the pancetta. The owner and I both advised the same thing: if the pancetta is too thin, it will simply disapeer in the initial frying. She was better off to have it sliced thick.

For all the criticisms of Rachel Ray, she influenced a woman last night who is customarily not in the kitchen to take on a cooking challenge. While it might make purists wince at the addition of the chilis and wine, this lady was going to serve a meal made with love. It was really quite a lovely way to end my day.

Regards,

Saint Pizza wrote:Is that......bacon....served with the bacon-fat sorbet?

I don't need my husband getting any ideas, okay?

It is. It's a bacon parfait... guanciale and green apple sorbet with canteloupe, icewine reduction, candied bacon and a bit of fresh mint. I've been meaning to write out a recipe for a while. If I get around to it, I'll post it.

(Sorry to take the thread so far astray)

My dinner for tonight. I have never made carbonara nor worked with morels. Any suggestions before I start?

Will post pics, etc.

H

Habibi wrote:My dinner for tonight. I have never made carbonara nor worked with morels. Any suggestions before I start?

Will post pics, etc.

H

Took me a bit to figure out what this post was about since I rarely look at the Post Subject within a thread. Now that I gather that your post was moved here by the Mods, I understand it. Plenty of good carbonara advice here,so I'll just give a quick tip about the morels: cut them all in half before you cook them. You are bound to have at least one that's just swarming with live ants. I don't mind eating bugs at all, but the swarms I often see inside morels are frightening.

Thanks for the re-direct Amata and and Kenny Z thanks for the tip. Thankfully no ants today, though I was really hoping at least one of the morels would yield some critters so I could scare my girlfriend. Next time.

I've never eaten carbonara, only read about it. Same goes for morels. This situation is symptomatic of the internet/food age where any number of us can identify obscure preparations and ingredients, even wax poetic about authentic techniques and recite genealogical histories of a dish, without ever having eaten the damn thing. Strange, ironic, mildly depressing.

Armed with such superficial knowledge and with IPhone in hand, dialed in on an LTH thread about carbonara, I set out to cook dinner. I decided to add morels because I recall reading that morels take well to being sauteed in fats, and carbonara seemed simple enough. Plus bacon, eggs and cheese sounded pretty damn good.

$90 bucks at Fox and Obel later (including a $40 Groupon) I had two bags of morels, a 1/4 pound of Guanciale, two bottles of Italian wine (white, red), some fettucini and assorted charcuterie. Forgot the pecorino though, so I used reggiano instead.

Guanciale, garlic, parmesan.



Morels, split, rinsed quick.



Chopped guanciale.



Chopped parmesan.



Morels and guanciale, after guanciale had been browned for about 15 minutes on a low flame.



Morels and guanciale after hanging out together for 10 minutes. I deglazed with white wine after this.



Eggs, parmesan, parsley, lots of black pepper.



Drain pasta, add egg mixture, beat furiously until creamy, add guanciale/morels/rendered fat, continue to beat and serve.





The results:

The pasta was toothsome and the sauce was perfectly creamy - no scrambled eggs or chunks of parmesan. The parsley provided a nice relief from the unctuous flavors. The guanciale overwhelmed the morels a bit, but they came together in a powerfully funky and porky cacophony that reminded me a bit of Southeast Asian food (sub fermented fish for morels). Everyone loved the dish. It could use some work - especially to bring out the flavors of the morel more, but all in all, a success.

Habibi,

You sound as self-critical as I can sometimes be, but that looks and sounds like a mouthwateringly good dish. Not that I think a dish that good needs changing, but if you have a few extra minutes next time, you might try rendering the guanciale separately, then removing it from the pan and cooking the morels in some of the fat. Then you could recombine. I think that might allow the morels to maintain their own flavor integrity a bit more. Or maybe it's just a matter of using slightly less guanciale to achieve the balance you're looking for.

Kennyz

Thanks Kenny and good call on cooking the pork and morels separately. In addition to preserving the flavor of the morels, it might help keep the guanciale crispy. It was nice and crisp, until I added the morels and wine. Combining at the end seems like the way to go.

I came down with a case of carbonara craving yesterday around 3. I have had versions of this dish while dining out but had always shied away from making my own. Thanks in large part to tips in this thread, the final product was exceptional and incredibly easy.

I did not have dried pasta on hand and was in no mood to shop so i made a fresh batch and I also used thick sliced bacon because that's what i had as well. Everything else used was pretty classic, cheese, black pepper, parsley and egg were beaten in a bowl and past was boiled. I added maybe 1/8 cup of the boiling pasta water to the egg/cheese mixture and then tossed the pasta. The result was exactly what i wanted, smooth and creamy and surprisingly easy.

Big thanks to LTH on this one and i'm glad to be able to add this one to my repertoire.

I tried it last night for the first time, using bacon as well. Adding a bit of the boiling water to the egg was a great idea, it came out perfectly, smooth and creamy. I have leftovers for tonight. Thanks to all for great suggestions.

trpt - how did the carbonara leftovers turn out. It seems as though every time that I have leftover carbonara, it has taken a turn from creamy and unctious, to slimey and greasy. This has lead me to making exactly how much I plan on eating that night, but any tips would be appreciated.

Well_Marbled wrote:trpt - how did the carbonara leftovers turn out. It seems as though every time that I have leftover carbonara, it has taken a turn from creamy and unctious, to slimey and greasy. This has lead me to making exactly how much I plan on eating that night, but any tips would be appreciated.

I heated the leftovers in the microwave, it didn't make it slimy or greasy. Less than a minute, about 45 seconds.

Made a batch of carbonara last night using a chunk of guanciale from Graziano's. Unfortunately, the parsley in my fridge wasn't quite as fresh as I thought so we omitted it. I made this batch a la Antonius (tempering the eggs with pasta water) plus I added about a tablespoon of cream for added creaminess (not sure if it made a difference but I really liked the texture overall). I love guanciale--it tastes so pig-gy.

Received this piece on a Carbonara controversy today. Clearly Adam Gopnik did not read Antonius' authoritative work on the subject. But we will have to forgive him, since it appears the 2005 Oxford Symposium volume is out of print.

Hi,

I was teased into clicking to a link by "Turn fresh corn into a creamy pasta sauce." I took the bait, then found this recipe for Fresh corn Carbonara. It could almost pass for the vegan version, because they use corn instead of eggs. Yet they have bacon, Parmesan cheese and heavy cream in there, too.

I guess by having pasta, bacon and cheese, it qualifies as a Carbonara. Not!

Regards,
Cathy2

Carbonara, Always Controversial

...
Carbonara is a relatively new phenomenon even in Italy. “A lot of the chefs and home cooks I’ve interviewed remember it being introduced in the late 1950s and early 1960s, and it being dismissed as too modern, too heavy, a trend,” says Katie Parla, the author of Tasting Rome. “Like some trends, it caught on and was eventually brought into the canon of Roman pastas.” How it got to Rome is a bit murky. Some say that American GIs stationed in Italy during World War II had locals cook with their army rations of bacon and eggs, and the dish was born this way.

“The American GI thing makes no sense,” Parla asserts. “You can’t make carbonara with powdered eggs. And you don’t have anyone mentioning carbonara in the postwar era. It’s an absurd claim.” In a more believable but still unconfirmed tale, carbonara was named after coal miners, the carbonai, who brought the dish down from the mountains. The ingredients could be gathered from local farms and kept without refrigeration, and the dish prepared over a wood fire with one pot. “There is a Neapolitan cookbook that has an egg-based, pork-rich dish before the ’50s,” recalls Parla. “We don’t know the origins, but the strongest claim you can make is that there was this dish in Naples and you had a lot of people coming to Rome from Naples in the postwar era.”
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