#QuarantineCooking: Spicy carbonara with miso

My friend Ray Tokumoto (who now lives in Florida) is always cooking, but during this pandemic, he’s been busting out some new dishes. This one looked interesting to me, and by chance, I had 3 egg yolks that I needed to use. I swear I had no idea about Chrissy Teigen’s spicy miso carbonara until after I made it!

This recipe uses miso and nori/furikake to give a slightly Asian twist to a basic carbonara and is actually a lot easier than I thought it would be. The one thing I would recommend for home cooks is to use the whole egg, if you don’t have a use for the leftover egg whites. But you could actually use the whites for making soufflé pancakes (coming up in a future blog).

Ingredients:
8 oz. spaghetti noodles
3-4 slices bacon, diced
3 egg yolks (it’s okay to use the whole egg)
2 T melted butter, slightly cooled
1-2 T miso paste
1 – 2 T hot pasta water
3 T heavy cream
1/4 cup Parmesan, shredded
Black pepper
Furikake or seasoned dried shredded nori
Tabasco sauce or chili pepper water (I use Hawaii Pantry)
Cook dried spaghetti to a pot of boiling water.

Sauté diced bacon in a skillet over medium heat. Turn off heat after it turns translucent, and set the hot pan aside.

While pasta is cooking, beat three egg yolks (or whole eggs) with heavy cream and the melted butter in a large bowl. Whisk miso with a little bit of hot pasta water, then whisk miso into yolk-cream-butter mixture. Add in parmesan and grind in fresh black pepper to your liking.

When the spaghetti is about 30 seconds from al dente, transfer from the pot with some pasta water into the bacon skillet and slosh the pasta around in the pan. Transfer the pasta and bacon into miso-butter-egg bowl. Mix well to cover every strand with sauce.

Divide pasta into two bowls or plates. Add sauce on top, sprinkle with furikake/nori, plus more parmesan. If you’re serving this to kids, just serve it as is; if this is for you, sprinkle the Tabasco or chili pepper water over it and enjoy. Serves 2.