Carbonara sbagliata with fried garlic and rosemary crumbs

I think the most fun I’ve had this year was watching this YouTube video. Apparently it’s an old video already, and I’m quite frankly disappointed at the algorithm for not having sent this my way sooner. “If this recipe would have had ham in it it would have been a British Carbonara”, “If my grandmother had wheels, she would have been a bike”. Few truer words have been spoken. So it is with a big trigger warning that I present this week’s recipe to you.

“Sbagliata/o” in Italian means wrong. Using this word seems to be a secret cheat code that allows you to ever so slightly modify a recipe, without bringing upon you the wrath of a thousand Nonnas. A Negroni sbagliato, for example, replaces gin with Prosecco. This carbonara sbagliata replaces guanciale with fried garlic and rosemary, which infuse the olive oil, as well as provide a super roasty toasty garlicky crumb to top things off with. I live in a very bacon/pancetta/guanciale forward household so replacing this ingredient was met with deafening scepticism. But! It! Was! Delicious! I wouldn’t say it moves the needle when it comes to being the “healthier” choice, but it’s cheaper? Vegetarian? Not mushrooms? Whatever you need to tell yourself man, but you have to give it a try.

Ingredients #

For 2:

• Olive oil
• 4 garlic cloves
• 3 sprigs rosemary
• 200g spaghetti or linguine
• 3 egg yolks
• 70g Parmigiano Reggiano
• Salt
• Black Pepper

Method #

1. Thinly slice the garlic cloves and pull the needles off the rosemary.

2. Add a generous layer of olive oil to a small pot and heat up over medium low heat. Add the garlic slices and fry gently over low to medium low heat until the garlic starts to develop some light brown color 5ish minutes. Take the garlic out of the oil and place on a paper towel to crisp up.

3. Then add the rosemary needles to the oil and fry until super fragrant and crispy, also about 5 minutes. Take out the rosemary and add it to the garlic on the paper towel to crisp up.

4. Pour your garlic and rosemary infused oil in a larger sauce pan where you can assemble the pasta later, and add a big pinch of salt to this. Ideally you’d want to use something like flaky sea salt here, I have a smoky sea salt which comes with glowing recommendations!

5. Bring a large pot of heavily salted water to a boil and cook the pasta al dente according to package instructions.

6. In the meantime, grate the parmesan cheese and mix it with three egg yolks and some black pepper into a bowl.

7. Once cooled down and crisped up, finely chop/crush/grind the rosemary and garlic slices until you have a nice crumbly consistency.

8. When the pasta is done cooking, add it to the pan with the oil and toss it through the oil with a splash of pasta cooking water. Once the pasta is nice and glossy from the oil, add the egg/parm/pep mixture and toss vigorously to combine. You can add a little pasta water to make the sauce loosen up and better adhere to the pasta. In the end you should end up with a super glossy, thick and creamy consistency.

9. Plate the pasta, and top with the roasty toasty garlicky crumbs.

Sometimes wrong is just good you know?