How to Make Carbonara
[Various Italian sounds]
(This is portioned just for me, so scale up as necessary if you aren’t a lonely boy)
INGREDIENTS
1/4 lb spaghetti
~4 strips of bacon or pancetta (guanciale if you can get your hands on it) cut into matchstick chunks
1 egg + 1 egg yolk, room temperature
~2 cups parmesan and/or pecorino romano cheese (freshly grated on a microplane)
Black pepper (bonus if you can toast the peppercorns whole before grinding)
DIRECTIONS
Whisk cheese and eggs together in a large mixing bowl until you get something that looks like a bit like a thick roux, add pepper
Boil pasta to al dente (salted water, natch)
Cook down the pork product in a small skillet to get the fat out
Once the pasta is done, use a pair of tongs to pull it out of the boiling water and directly into the mixing bowl (this will bring along some of the starchy pasta water to help the sauce come together)
Add the pork (rendered fat included) into the mixing bowl
Use the tongs to give everything a nice powerful mix. The heat from the pasta, pork & pork fat will cook and emulsify the egg & cheese mixture into a beautiful glossy sauce
Plate up, top with more pepper and grated parmesan (I also add crushed red pepper flakes for a smidgen of kick), and EAT!
Rylie refused to let me be a picky eater.
It was summer 2008. I’d come back to Houston from my first disastrous attempt at moving to Los Angeles. With no friends, no real world experience outside of home, and no marketable skills to speak of, I bounced off this city like a quarter after maybe four or five months. I may as well have been fleeing an army of pitchfork-wielding peasants with the way I raced back to Texas with my tail between my legs.
As embarrassing as it was to admit that I hadn’t the first idea of how to be a human alive in the world and on my own, none of it really mattered because I was in love. I was more in love than I ever thought it was possible to be.
To this day, Rylie is still the most assertive person I’ve ever known. Others would call her hardheaded. But she taught me that having conviction is one of the most important gifts you can give to yourself. Today she’s a nurse practitioner in an ICU, and every day she brings people back from the brink of death by refusing to accept mortality as an inevitability.
But back then, when we lived together and were madly in love, one of her priorities was to share with and awaken in me a love of food and fascination with cooking.
Thank you, food rat
Rylie thought of food the way Remy does in Ratatouille (for real, those were her words). The combination of flavors and textures was a synesthetic experience meant to be understood like a piece of music. Everything had its part to play in the composition, and understanding how the ingredients played off each other was key to understanding their power.
She also wouldn’t let me be a coward when it came to taste. If I told her I didn’t like mushrooms, her response was “bullshit” and she would cook with them the next day. Over the course of the two years we were together, I had my culinary horizons forcibly expanded, almost at gunpoint.
I mean, if she wasn’t going to acquiesce to death, what chance did a picky eater stand?
The pieces left behind
Last week, my carbonara (see above) got an unexpectedly large reaction on social media. More than one person thought I was sitting at a restaurant. This was, of course, incredibly flattering, but it also got me thinking about the way people leave their marks on you.
It’s been close to 15 years since Rylie and I split up. Whatever it was that we were has faded into the distant past, and whatever events and emotions that caused the relationship to end have been completely forgiven and forgotten. The water is under the bridge and I don’t even know where that bridge is anymore. Yet today, because she refused to let me be a picky eater, cooking is one of the great gifts that I give to myself. The feeling I get when a dish transforms from a collection of discrete ingredients to a fully-formed, well-balanced, flavorful mini-masterpiece is indescribable. It’s the closest I will ever get to being a wizard.
And it's all because I dared to love someone.
The Absence of Old Friends
All the people in life I’ve loved
Gone from my life and think of me no more
I worry about all of you constantly
I hope you’re okay
I hope you’re thriving
I miss you
Even if I was the one to say goodbye
I miss the people we were when we loved each other
And every time I do something we did
I make a mirepoix of memory and think of a time
When our mutual attention made me feel
Valued, validated, loved