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

[Philip & Susan Troy]

Also sprach Craig Jones.:
>Hmm.  Odd.  My father learnt a recipe in Naples which he refers to as
>Spaghetti Carabonara which pours a mixture of sour cream, lots of
>beaten eggs, cooked bacon pieces, garlic, and onions (sometimes
>mushrooms) over hot strained spagetti in the pot that you cook the
>spaghetti in and stir vigourously until all the egg has cooked into
>scrambled egg like consistency and has coated the pasta in small
>chunks here and there. Very mundane and I probably eat it about once a
>month... Looking nothing like the cream and bacon sauce that smothers
>pasta in pasta carbonara...  Hmm. Odd.

What you're describing is the classic dish as it used to be, and is,
outside of restaurants, with one deviation, and a minor one, in the
quantity you're talking about. I don't think they eat a lot of sour
cream in Napoli. I don't know if your father added this in lieu of
olive oil as an emulsifier, or simply a good-tasting fat source, but
olive oil is generally regarded as indispensable, whereas sour cream
isn't usually part of the prescription.

Ideally, the eggs shouldn't really curdle, just become thicker, but
then I think people have a greater phobia of undercooked eggs than
they used to, and many people today, when faced with the actual dish
as described above, probably prefer the grainy texture over the
slight sliminess of raw egg white.

I also make this dish pretty frequently, since my wife developed a
tomato allergy. She does okay with low-acid, yellow tomato sauce in
small quantities (for those I usually do a French-style with a little
blonde roux), but that's something of a seasonal item.

Adamantius