So, this recipe was in the New York Times today. It’s a version of my favorite pasta sauce. (It’s also a super quick meal - start the pasta and sauce simultaneously, they’re done simultaneously.) Mine uses tomato paste, but regardless, they totally miss a couple of key points here: most particularly, you do NOT just throw everything in the pan like that. *le sigh*

Now here’s the real way to make it, (and you’ll see why as I describe it):

1. Boil salted water for pasta and when it boils, throw in 1 package spaghetti. At the same time, start heating about 2 t. olive oil at medium-low heat in a large skillet .

2. Mince 2-4 cloves garlic (to taste), saute it for a minute or two, until it’s just starting to turn golden.

3. Push the garlic off to the side of the pan (away from the heat) and add 2 cans anchovies (drained, reserve oil) to a separate area of the pan, and 1-2 T red pepper (to taste) to another area of the pan.

Basically, you should have your pan divided into thirds, one ingredient in each area, with the garlic furthest away from the heat so it doesn’t burn. Push the oil away from the pepper; you’re trying to toast it. The anchovies should be near the heat too. Now this is the cool part: the anchovies will melt. Yep, into a flaky sort of paste. You might have to squash them a bit with your spatula, but they’ll melt.

4. Once the anchovies show signs of melting, mix everything up and push it to the side. Add 1-2 T capers (to taste) in the middle of the pan and let them dry out for a minute.

5. Stir in 1 can tomato paste and, if desired, some of the reserved anchovy oil. Your pasta should be done - add a ladle or so of the starchy pasta water to the sauce to get it to whatever consistency you want (keep it pretty thick, though).

6. Toss the sauce and the pasta. Smile.

Well, I had some of that pancetta from the shrimp left over, so obviously I decided to make a pasta carbonara.

Carbonara is essentially an egg sauce with bacon/pancetta. I added spinach because there was a dramatic incident with my intended salad (we’ll get to that later). Plus, spinach is delicious.

For this dish, I start the pasta water at the same time as I begin the sauce. To make the carbonara sauce, I saute about a quarter pound of diced pancetta on medium heat until the fat starts to render. I throw in minced garlic until it just begins to turn golden and then throw in the spinach (as much as I can possibly fit in the pan is my general rule of thumb) to wilt a bit. Put that aside in a bowl and add some egg to the pan. This time I tried to use an egg white substitute, but clearly that didn’t thicken enough (duh, I’m an idiot), so I ended up tossing about half of it and adding 2 whole eggs, which worked perfectly well - so the lesson we get is to use approx. 3 egg whites and 2 whole eggs, or just 4 whole eggs if you aren’t concerned about weight/cholesterol (and let’s be honest, if you’re making this dish, you can’t be that concerned about your diet).

I usually turn the heat really really low for the eggs. You want to add parmesan cheese (this time I used asiago because it’s what I had on hand, and it was TASTY) at this point - about the same volume as the egg, so it’s like a 1:1 cheese:egg ratio. Crank in a bunch of black pepper, and stir constantly. The cheese will melt at about the same time as the eggs begin to thicken, which is when you want to take it off the heat and stir in a ladleful of the pasta water - remember, we aren’t making scrambled eggs here!

Drain the pasta, put everything in the pan and mix it up, and smile. Because you get tasty pasta carbonara.