Pasta Carbonara! Pasta Carbonara! And a wine pairing!

I have been moving, which means I have not been cooking, which means I am the laziest bum, but I have returned in the wake of delicious Italian food to bestow upon you the blessings of the greatest of cities, the District of Columbia. Namely, the Weekly Feed column from the DCist, which I’m sure the equivalent column from the Gothamist is constantly ridiculing in all its snotty glory. But fear not! For the homely, pleasant recipes of the DCist’s recipe blog have given us PASTA CARBONARA!

Seriously, I can’t shut up about this. You can make this pasta in approximately 20 minutes, which to starving people spending too much time at the gym because now they live with gloria who eats, like, 30 gallons of butter every day but still keeps her girlish figure, is pretty awesome.

Oh, hey. Besides the header picture, which I REALLY encourage you to set as your background and stare at all day, you can ignore that DCist recipe. It is not the best. Mine is the best.

Ingredients (for two or three hungry folks):

• 1 3oz. package of pancetta, or 3-4 ounces of pancetta, depending on how fat you feel. You can also use bacon.
• 1/2 pound of pasta. We used gemelli. Penne may work better.
• 1 egg
• 1 egg yolk
• 1/2 cup parmesan cheese, grated like a mofo. (I bought mine at the store, pre-grated, because I am lazy!)
• 1/4 of a white onion. Gloria suggested adding more onion in the end, so you can do that too.
• PEAS. ONE CUP OF PEAS.
• salt and pepper.

Instructions, optimized for time efficiency:

1. Prep work: Chop yo onion however you prefer. Want huge chunks? Go for it! Dice yo pancetta. Nothing too fancy, just to the chunks will give their delicious fat to you. Thaw yo peas. THAW THEM! I did it in the microwave.

2. Salt some water up, and cook the pasta until it’s al dente, or if you’re cooking for Miss “Can’t Move Her Dang Jaw”, until it melts in your mouth. The salt is actually somewhat critical, I’d say, so don’t forget it. And don’t use too much, Goldilocks.

3. Put a panon medium, then toss your pancetta in when it’s hot. You can smell the aroma of rich people bacon right there. Once you see a decent amount of fat coming out and sizzling, throw your onions in. Now you have onions cooking in pancetta fat, and you win cooking. Feel free to eat some of your onions. They are delicious. I went until my onions were mostly clear.

4. Everything will be fine on its own for a bit, so whisk (or fork) your eggy ingredients. When that’s nice, put in that cheese, and blend it all together into a nice, chunk mass. You want to coat all your cheese in egg, so it looks creamy.

5. Is your pasta al dente yet? How ’bout your onions, are they done? Good! Drain the pasta, but save the water.  Put your pasta back into the bowl it came from, kill the heat, and now work fast. Dump in your bacon, dump in your peas, dump in your eggy/cheesy stuff, and stir like the dickens until it’s all integrated. STIR. If you don’t stir, you’ll end up with scrambled eggs and pasta, which is not as good.

6. Okay, my pasta ended up a little dry. DON’T DO WHAT I DID. DON’T DUMP YOUR PASTA WATER DOWN THE DRAIN! If it’s looking a little dry, in step five, spoon in some of your pasta water and stir until it’s a consistency that you like. Then, finish it off by salting and peppering it. Taste it first–the pancetta/bacon probably salted it up a good deal for you already.

7. EAT.

Bonus: I paired this one splendidly with a Barefoot Merlot, which, if you’re still drinking it after you eat, turns sweeter after the food stops.

I essentially served myself and ate too fast for any attractive photos to be taken. Truly, pasta carbonara is the Loch Ness of foods.

PS: I love peas.