Month: March 2019

Carbonara

Keep it clean, keep it simple.

Ingredients:

  • Really, really good pasta (just make your own already)
  • 1 1/2 cups Parmigiano-Reggiano (grate it yourself)
  • One slice of pancetta per person, diced
  • 3 egg yolks
  • 1 whole egg
  • 2 tbs butter
  • 3 cloves chopped garlic
  • Salt & Pepper

Once this one starts cooking it moves very fast, so make sure you do all of your prep work beforehand. Pick out a good, very large bowl as the location for where you do all the final prep work.

Get your pasta water going over very hot heat, make sure to salt it. In a small pan start to fry your diced pancetta in low heat. As your water is getting going and the pancetta is starting to fry and render prep your eggs and Parm. First, whisk your 3 yolks and 1 whole egg. Next, dump in 1 cup of Parmesan (reserving the remaining 1/2 cup). Mix this well to form a sort of egg/parmesan glorious paste.

Right about this time is when you pancetta should be ready. It’s crisped, the fat is rendered, but it’s not burnt. Remove the pancetta but leave the fat in the pan. Once you’ve moved the pancetta to a side bowl throw your diced garlic into this hot rendered fat. Cook briefly to roast the garlic. While cooking toss in a little bit of salt and pepper for taste. Remove the garlic once it’s roasted and place in the same side bowl as your pancetta.

Here’s where things move fast. Cook your pasta al dente and drain via a colander, don’t wash the pasta. Quickly move the pasta from the colander to the “finishing bowl”. If the pasta hasn’t fully drained that’s even better, since a little pasta water only improves flavor.

Once the pasta is in the finishing bowl immediately toss in the pancetta, garlic, egg/parmesan paste, and butter. Use tongs to quickly lift and mix all of the ingredients. Toss for 2 or 3 minutes, careful to get the butter fully melted and the eggs combined – but not scrambled. Salt and pepper to taste. Plate and eat immediately.

Shrimp with Pancetta Garlic Cream

Ladled over rice this brings a tear to your quasi-cajun heart. Recipe below is for two servings. Fresh shrimp is 95% of the recipe.

  • 2 1/2 tbs of butter
  • 1/4 white onion roughly chopped
  • 2 1/2 cloves garlic
  • 1/8 cup pancetta
  • 1/4 tsp salt
  • 1/2 tsp pepper
  • 1/2 tsp parika
  • 1/4 cup heavy cream (move up to 1/3 cup if you want a little less punch and a little more soup)
  • 1 lb cleaned fresh shrimp

This is a quick recipe, so make sure to clean your shrimp first.

Ok, drop your butter in over medium low heat and add your onions and pancetta. Once the onions start to go and have passed just passed the translucent stage and are turning the corner towards browning add in your minced garlic. Let the garlic become aromatic and lose a bit of their bite. This should be around 5 minutes depending on your heat. At this point add in your salt, pepper, and paprika.

Ok, everyone at this point should be friends and your butter is about to consider browning. Just before it does, add in your shrimp. Mix continuously to cook the shrimp evenly and completely coat their flesh. The absolute moment the shrimp is cooked (honestly I do it about 1 minute before the shrimp is actually done), add in your cream and turn the heat all the way down to low and leave uncovered.

Make a small batch of rice, pour this over, and hi-five the sky.

Tomatillo Doña Salsa

If you don’t like tacos, we’re not going to be friends. This salsa is a lover of tacos, breakfast, chips, ceviche and anything else you can think of. The roasted tomatillo’s add a fruity, tang element to the usually one-note hot doña sauce. It makes the whole sauce a lot more versatile.

This will make about 2 1/4 cups of salsa:

Ingredients:

  • 6 ripe japaleños
  • Around 8.5 ounces of tomatillos
  • 1/4 one large white onion
  • 2 large or 3 small garlic cloves
  • 1 tbsp salt
  • 1/2 cup grape seed oil
  • 1/2 bushel cilantro
  • 1 tsp (or more) lime juice to taste

Start off by boiling a small pot of water. In the water, toss in the 6 jalapeños along with 2 of the largest pieces of your 1/4 of onion. Boil all of these together for 18 minutes.

In a separate cast iron skillet, char the peeled tomatillos, the garlic, and the remaining onion. Make sure not to burn any of the pieces, you just want to get a well rounded char. You want the “roasted” flavor without any burn/bitter aftertaste.

Pluck the tomatillos, onion, and garlic out of the skillet as they develop good overall color. Then start to remove the jalapeños and onion once the timer goes off.

Pull out the jalapeños and chop off the stems.

Let everything cool for a minute or two in a bowl. I say this only because I’ve had a crap blender before and the heat from the ingredients caused a bunch of incidents.

Once everything has cooled, toss all of your ingredients into a blender. This includes the 1/2 cup grape seed oil, salt, bushel of cilantro and lime.

Blend, blend blend.

Once properly mixed give it a taste. The weirdest and most important thing to know is that over the course of about a day as the salsa cools it will drastically change flavor. The spice will move to the background and the tomatillos will come forward. If it’s unbearably hot from the start, add a little extra oil and a pinch more of salt and blend some more.

Bien.