Name: Bucatini Carbonara
Yield: Serves 4 as a starter or 2 as a main
Cuisine: Italian
Ingredients: plenty of freshly crushed black pepper; 200 g bucatini; 100 g guanciale, sliced thickly (3 mm), then across into 2 cm-wide lardons; 2 large eggs; 80 g grated Pecorino Romano (or Parmesan, or mixture of the two), plus extra to serve; 1 dessertspoon olive oil

Preparation info

Serves
4
as a starter

Difficulty
Complex

Appears in

The Geometry of Pasta

By Caz Hildebrand and Jacob Kenedy

Published 2010

About

This famous pasta is unrecorded before the Second World War. There are any number of unsubstantiated tales of its origin, including that it was traditional sustenance for charcoal workers (carbone meaning ‘charcoal’), or that it was named after the Carbonari (‘charcoalmen’ — a secret society prominent in Italy’s unification). Whatever the origins, they were likely in Rome, which remains the spiritual home of this pasta today. A good carbonara is luscious, unctuous, pigg