Black Pepper Whole Wheat Spaghetti Carbonara

Inspired by leftover bacon, Ratio and City Fresh spinach, we made black pepper whole wheat spaghetti carbonara with rye popovers tonight.

This was a meal I’d have paid good money for at a restaurant. The only downside is that we didn’t have quite enough spinach.

Black Pepper Whole Wheat Pasta Carbonara w/ Spinach

1 lb. black pepper pasta (either homemade or from someplace like Ohio City Pasta)
4 oz. bacon (we used some from Whole Foods)
1 cup grated Parmesan
2 eggs
Spinach (plenty of it—our 6 oz. or so wasn’t enough)
1 TB. Olive oil
Fresh black pepper

(1) While you can get black pepper pasta commercially, I haven’t seen the wheat / pepper combination. I used Ruhlman’s ratio of 3 parts flour to 2 parts eggs (by weight) using 50 / 50 whole wheat pastry flour and all-purpose, adding plenty of black pepper. The pastry flour makes the pasta softer.

(2) Sauté the bacon and olive oil until bacon is almost crisp. Add spinach and sauté another minute.

(3) Meanwhile, cook pasta. Homemade should take about two minutes.

(4) Heat a large bowl in the oven or by pouring in boiling water (and then dumping the water out, of course). Add eggs and Parmesan and beat together.

(5) Add pasta to egg mixture, then add spinach, bacon, and rendered fat.

(6) Serve with additional black pepper and Parmesan.

Rye Popovers

8 oz. (1 cup) milk
4 oz. eggs (two large)
4 oz. flour (1÷3 whole wheat pastry, 1/3 rye, 1/3 all-purpose) (about 1 cup total)
2 oz. (1÷2 stick) butter
1 t. koshe salt (or to taste)

(1) Combine milk, eggs, salt and flour in a bowl with a whisk. Let sit for a while (at least 15 minutes) to hydrate flour.

(2) Preheat a popover tray or muffin tin in a 450 degree oven. Remove tray / tin and divide butter between six cups. Pour in batter.

(3) Bake at 450 degrees for 15 minutes, then at 375 degrees for another 20 minutes.

This was a pretty rich dinner, and I had plenty of Sangiovese with it (which added the fruit group to the other three). Dessert wasn’t necessary. As Mark Bittman points out (the carbonara recipe was adapted from How to Cook Everything), Carbonara is “sinfully delicious—like an egg-butter-sugar dessert.”

Having an original photo for this would have been nice, but we were too occupied with eating. The blog accompanying the photo in this post (courtesy of www.blork.org at http://www.blork.org/blorkblog/2007/02/11/classic-spaghetti-alla-carbonara/) has some interesting ideas, e.g. using pancetta instead of bacon and eating this as a “hangover cure.”