These Live Cooking are a lot of fun, and it’s interesting for me every single time when I get to decide which recipe I’m going to propose.
I’m trying to promote an healthy but yet very traditional cooking style from Tuscany. It’s basically Home Cooking but most of the recipes that we prepare are simple and of “peasant” origins.
In this case we have a simple but very famous recipe: Carbonara, well, I couldn’t go without doing this with you at least once! Most people think it’s hard to make or complex, it is actually very easy and here is why we propose you two versions!
Thank to my love, Gianluca, for being my partner in this little show!
The history of this dish it’s controverse but here is the story I like to tell:
[..] As for the circumstances surrounding the birth of this dish, it’s plausible that the availability of US military rations in the immediate post-WWII period provided the decisive impetus for the construction of this recipe. The combination of the typical American inclination for eggs and bacon along with pasta dressed with cheese has led to its immediate success on both sides of the Atlantic. But to whom do we owe this invention? The hypotheses are different, but above all the story, never denied, by Renato Gualandi prevails. This young chef of Bolognese origin was hired on September 22nd, 1944 to prepare a lunch for the official meeting between the English Eighth Army Division and the American Fifth Army Division in the newly liberated Riccione.
Making virtue out of necessity, the cook unconsciously created a dish destined to become famous all over the world: “The Americans had fantastic bacon, delicious heavy cream, cheese and powdered egg yolks. I put it all together and served this pasta to the generals and officers for dinner. At the last moment I decided to put some black pepper that gave off an excellent taste. I cooked the egg quite “runny” and they were conquered by the pasta”. Later Gualandi became a cook for the allied troops in Rome from September 1944 to April 1945 and this period was enough to spread the fame of carbonara in the Capital.
Obviously the story of the carbonara invented in Riccione in 1944 by a Bolognese chef using the rations of the American army, can generate some perplexity among purists (sometimes authentic fundamentalists without any historical justification) of the Roman tradition, but this does not make the matter less truthful or plausible. On the other hand, we like to think that carbonara is the result of the all Italian great skill of culinary improvisation that has created a masterpiece in one of the most difficult moments of our history…
From “Gambero Rosso”, article by Luca Cesari
Buon Appetito!