Emeril and Rachel Ray We Ain't

Okay, Here's My Deal...

Remember the pancetta we searched the Earth for in my last post? Yeah, we used it tonight to make the "Carbonara" recipe that began the whole quest. It was not pretty in the kitchen. My husband at one time said, "I'm making some poor Italian guy roll over in his grave right now."

First, you need to understand that I am by no means in my element in the kitchen. I am a make it from a box or a can kind of woman myself. I make regular calls to my mom to find out how to do things that most typical women know how to do. My husband is better, but his deal is that he is sometimes impatient...especially if anything technical goes wrong.

So, to start with, my husband is so excited about finally getting to cook this dish that he puts the spaghetti into the water before the water is boiling...so he takes it out to let the water boil. Then as he is opening the garlic bud? flower? big thing? we both say, "Does one clove mean the whole thing or the little things insdie the big thing?" One call to his mother and we were set on the correct garlic capacity.

Next, as he is reading the steps he says, "Egg yolk...is that the whole thing?" I tell him no, it is just the yellow part and he says, "How do you do that?!" Luckily, this is one thing I do know how to do in the kitchen, so I separated the yolks from the whites for him.

Moving on...as he is nearing the end, he asks where our cheese grater is and I tell him I am not so sure we even have one, which is not convenient because he bought a hunk of romano cheese. So, I am desperately looking for a cheese grater when I yank out one of the drawers and pull it off of the track so when I put it back it almost all tumbled down into the cabinet below. Luckily I caught it in time.

At the same time, my husband has put in the pasta with the sauce and is wondering how on Earth he is supposed to stir it when there is so much...as he drops some on the floor...I suggest he gets the tongs we use to get our hot dogs out of the water when we boil them. This is the point where he said he was making some Italian man roll over in is grave.

As he stirred, I found a somewhat suitable substitute for a cheese grater--a half circle plastic pasta strainer. I furiously am grating the cheese, which I am sure is prolonged by the utensil I was using...my husband is just chuckling to himself saying this has just been a clusterf**k from the getgo. He tasted a bit of the long-sought after holy grail of meats, the pancetta and said, "Yeah, pancetta? It is pretty much just bacon." and I just laughed.

We sit down to eat and another issue arises...it is a little warm for my husband. Not temperature warm but spicy warm. Keep in mind that the mild sauce from Taco Bell is way too hot for him. This recipe had a teaspoon of crushed red pepper flakes. He was pouring sweat, but managed to eat a healthy portion of the long-awaited Carbonara with genuine pancetta that tasted like plain old bacon you can buy at Aldi's.

Here is the game plan for the next meal of Carbonara: (1) buy a cheese grater (2) use just a pinch or two of the red pepper flakes (3) don't make an almost three hour round trip for pancetta.

Emeril and Rachel...yeah, don't worry about any competition from us. Your jobs are secure.