those who know my dislike of eggs are puzzled by my passion for carbonara and truly I can’t explain it. In no other form will I eat undercooked eggs without gagging but somehow carbonara is ok. Mind you I dont like carbonara if the egg is not delicately cooked and enrobing each piece of pasta (bucatini is my favorite but rigatoni are good too). Who am I kidding? car tires doused in the no cream but still creamy emulsion of eggs, cheese, crispy cured pork bits and black pepper would taste good. Carbonara is my Proustian Madeline-a direct line to my early years in Rome where I dont think I ordered anything else in a restaurant for years. It is as I lovingly call it “heart attack on a plate”-no nutritionist is ever going to recommend the carbonara diet made up as it is of salt fat and carbohydrates. But once a year, when the first farm eggs start coming into the restaurant and the days are noticeably longer and the sun feels a little warmer on your face, I like to cook up a classic (no effing dairy ok?) Roman carbonara. It’s too my way of thinking the perfect celebration of the beginning of a return to light and warmth. On a cold winter day it’s a reminder of the warmth that will come back, of the warmth that exists in other places and above all of the warmth of my childhood.
