Liguine alla Carbonara (for the non-pork-eater)

Since my family and I don’t eat pork due to religious beliefs, over the years, we’ve come up with some creative ways to make dishes sans pork products.  One of my favorites is Linguine alla Carbonara.  The dish is traditionally made with pasta, and tossed with eggs, pecorino romano cheese, and guanciale, an unsmoked pork from the jowels of the pig.  Nowadays, pancetta or proscuito are used and many cooks use Parmesan instead of pecorino romano (but I’d like to think this is because they have not yet fallen in love with pecorino romano!).  Italian versions do not use cream — this is an addition of northern cultures, like France, England and the United States.  While researching this dish, I discovered something so surprising – it doesn’t contain tomatoes!!  My dish always has had tomatoes.  The first time I ever made it was probably when I was about 14 years old.  My mother had a 1979 Better Homes and Garden’s Italian Cook Book and the cover dish was Linguine alla Carbonara.   The only explanation is that I had made the recipe a few times and thought I knew all of the ingredients in it.  I tend to quickly look at a recipe, close the book and then make the dish the way I want!  This time, I may have looked at the cover picture and thought it contained tomatoes because the pieces of pancetta were reddish looking (and not crispy like bacon). 

For all these years, I’ve made it with tomatoes and now I couldn’t imagine it not having tomatoes in it.  So here is my recipe for Linguine alla Carbonara.

**NOTE – This dish contains raw egg which is effectively “cooked” by tossing it with the hot pasta.  If you have any reservations about consuming raw egg, please cook the egg and cream mixture and then allow it to cool before adding in the remaining ingredients.

Linguine all Carbonara with turkey bacon and tomatoes

2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
½ cup yellow onion, minced
10 slices turkey bacon, diced
1 pound linguine
2 large egg yolks, at room temperature
¼ cup heavy cream, at room temperature
½ cup half and half, at room temperature
1 cup finely grated Pecorino Romano, at room temperature
1 cup diced tomato
2 tablespoons minced fresh parsley
¼ teaspoon salt
Freshly ground black pepper

Heat olive oil in a large saute pan over medium heat. Add the onion, garlic and bacon and cook until the onions are translucent and the bacon is beginning to crisp. Remove from the heat and set aside.

Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil and cook the linguine according to package directions until al dente, about 5 minutes.

While pasta is cooking, whisk the egg yolks, heavy cream, half and half, and parsley with Romano cheese, reserving 2 tablespoons of the cheese.  Add the bacon and onion mixture and the 1 cup of diced tomatoes to the egg and cream mixture, stir. 

Set a colander inside a large bowl.  As soon as the pasta is ready, immediately drain pasta in the colander and reserve a small amount of the cooking liquid left in the bowl under the colander.  Return pasta to the pot.   Toss the hot pasta with the sauce until pasta is well-coated giving the hot pasta a chance to heat up the egg and cream mixture. 

Season with salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste. If needed, add a bit of the reserved pasta cooking liquid to help toss the pasta if it is dry. Sprinkle with the reserved Romano cheese. Serve immediately.

Another very interesting thing I discovered is that the cookbook mentioned above is now a collector’s item.  To get a new copy of it, you’ll have to shell out $221.  This is one of those cookbooks from my youth that started me loving cooking, so it’s priceless to me.