[Sca-cooks] Re: OOP 'fredo sauce????

[Philip & Susan Troy]

Also sprach Stefan li Rous:
>Adamantius said:
>>  However, life is short and all flesh is as fettucine,
>
>Soft, tasty and creamy? Well, at least some...

And other such is hard and brittle...

>
>>  so I try not to worry too much about such things.
>
>>  P.S. : There is _also_ no such thing as Carbonara Sauce ;-)
>
>Okay, and what is the story behind "Carbonara" sauce?

Well, only inasmuch as it's another dish prepared in the serving
bowl. It involves pancetta or cured hog jowls (I forget what those
are called in Italian), diced and cooked with onions, garlic,
sometimes some herbs and other vegetables, mixed with cheese and raw
eggs, tossed with the hot pasta until the eggs are cooked into a sort
of creamy scrambled-egg sauce.)  I think in both cases, these used to
be either home-style dishes, or from a time when waiters in
restaurants used to actually prepare food at the table, which is more
or less a dead art, as far as I can tell. Casualties of this demise
include real Cesare Salad (not named after the Julio-Claudian
Imperial Family and so not spelled that way), the aforementioned
Spaghetti Carbonara, Fettucine Alfredo, real Beef Stroganoff, and
various game ragouts, salmis of wild duck, not to mention all those
pressed duck dishes that were common in fine restaurants until the
1930's or so. I remember being impressed to learn that Margali still
owns a working duck press...

I think the intrusion of ingredients like cream into both "Alfredo
Sauce" [sic] and "Carbonara Sauce" [sic], (not to mention "Cesare
Salad Dressing" [sic]) are an indication of steps that were taken so
these dishes could be completely prepared by restaurant cooks,
possibly even held at some stage of semi-preparation, finished and
plated by cooks, with the waiters only serving it. And then there's
the advent of various home convenience foods, like sauce mixes and
industrially canned, bottled or jarred sauces, to put the official
stamp of Cultural Evolution on what was originally just heavy
bastardization.

But originally, it seems as if Spaghetti Carbonara was a dish that
could be prepared fairly easily in the field, allegedly by charcoal
burners (in other words, woodcutters who earned their living making
charcoal from wood), who are known as carbonari. I can't really vouch
for this, and wonder if it's just a reference to smoked meat, but
that's The Official Story. And then we all know The Official Story is
frequently not true.

Adamantius, who likes thin Linguine a la Puttanesca, a.k.a. Pasta
Painted Like a 'Ho'...