coal miner's dinner

I usually have a pattern in these posts: I tell you what the cookbook said, and then I tell you what I did instead (intentionally or, as is more often the case, because I messed something up). Maybe that's a dumb idea.

I often tell you what cookbook I use, and if it's not a cookbook I recommend, I just don't post anything out of it. I mean, if a cookbook can't justify its existence with at least one good recipe, then what's the point? Besides food porn, anyway, and I'm not reposting that, because showing you someone else's photography is copyright infringement, and as someone who repeatedly (unsuccessfully) hopes to make money from his works, I have to respect copyrights. You want food porn, buy your own damn books. It's certainly less embarrassing than buying the other kind. I assume.

Getting back to food, if you've found that one recipe that justifies the book's inclusion in your collection, and you're comfortable making it, there's one of two reasons. First: it is easy, straightforward, and you have managed to never mess it up so badly that the results are inedible, toxic, or otherwise ill-advised. Second: you have made it "wrong" nearly every single time, but you're still so happy with the results that you don't care, and may have even reached a point where you open the book only to see the name of the recipe, or the pretty food porn, and then mostly ignore it for the rest of the process. Congratulations: you're a cook!

Dad likes to tell the story of something he was making to feed a Boy Scout troop on a campout. One of the moms looked over his shoulder and observed, "that's not what the recipe says." I don't remember what Dad actually responded, because by this point in the story, we're usually both laughing, but it boiled down to: "the recipe is wrong." This is also the point in his story when I often interrupt him by quoting the first time he told me the story: "perfect is not an exact science." I knew that his words had tripped over one another on delivery, but I still teased him by countering that's exactly what perfect means.

Anyway.

Does anyone ever really make a recipe by exactly following the recipe? From now on, I'm just going to tell you what I did, unless something went so terribly wrong that my way was a mistake. Maybe I just won't tell you about those times.

The Chief Taster found a couple recipes recently for pasta carbonara, picked her favorite, and made her dinner request. I glanced at the page, found that the only thing I still needed to buy was the pasta and some bacon, and later got worried at the grocery when I told the lady pouring wine samples what I was making for dinner, and she gleefully told me how she made it; her version had cream. I was fairly certain my book didn't show cream in the ingredient list. Should I buy some cream? I had milk. Maybe that would do? We were heading out of town that weekend, so I didn't want to buy cream unless I knew I needed it; I was already worried I'd have to dump some milk, because there's only so much I can reasonably consume in three days. Dammit. OK, I'll risk not getting cream. Fingers crossed.

I didn't need any cream. Which is the other funny thing about recipes: you can find about 639 different versions for whatever the hell you want to make. I had even spoken with the wine lady about how there are different versions of carbonara, and she said that it's supposed to be a simple dish (the name refers to the coal miners who ate it), but the kind you get in restaurants is all... [hand waving]. "Tarted up?" I suggested. "Yes!" She insisted that her way was the right way, and warned me not to let the cream and eggs curdle.

If she's to be believed, here is the wrong way--or one of them--which is still damn tasty, and probably easier, once I figure the timing a little better.

Pasta Carbonara
1 lb fettucini
3/4 pound bacon, cut hacked torn shredded into 1/2 chunks. I have a lot of trouble cooking raw, unfrozen bacon. The Chief Taster suggested scissors, but she didn't suggest it until I was almost done, and by then I was already frustrated and swearing a lot.
5-6 minced cloves garlic
ground black pepper (the book said "at least 1.5 t." I didn't measure mine, but I used that as a guideline)
6 large eggs, beaten
1.5 C (ish) parmesan cheese. I didn't measure this, either.
salt? (I forgot. Whatever. People salt the hell out of their own servings, anyway.)
chopped fresh parsley

• Cook the bacon in a skillet until crisp, or you're happy with it. I was a little frustrated because my pasta water was boiling WAY before I was ready for it, and I was keeping one eye on my popovers, which were also ahead of schedule, because the bacon wasn't cooking fast enough, and was still sticking to the skillet a little.
• At some point, you'll need cooked pasta. I had trouble getting things coordinated, so you're on your own figuring out the timing on that. I also can't help you with stringy pasta sticking together (this is why I almost never use spaghetti or fettucini). I need to work on that.
• Remove the bacon and drain all but 2-3 T grease. Cook the garlic and pepper in the grease for about a minute, stirring frequently. A normal person will smell this. I did not.
• Toss the bacon back in there, give it a stir, and turn off the heat. Dump in the cooked pasta, stir well, and cook for about a minute. If your skillet is too small for this, dump the bacon mix into the pasta. Just so everything's in the same place, warm and cozy.
• You should have your beaten eggs gathered in a separate bowl so you can dump them all in at once. Do that now. Stir it all up, then ignore for a minute or two (remember that the heat is off. Between the skillet and the pasta, there's enough heat to cook the eggs when they're spread all over the pasta like that). Stir in the cheese. That last part was easy for me, because the Chief Taster was ravenous, and hovering over the stove waiting for dinner, so she stirred while dumped what I thought was probably the right amount of cheese into the noodles.
• Top servings with parsley. Or not. I don't care. It's only a recipe, after all.