Inspired by, of all things, a cheesecake recipe involving tofu. I'm also working on a vegetarian version using this emulsion technique with olive oil in place of bacon grease. Don't worry, this dish doesn't use tofu, nor is it vegetarian. It uses a pound of bacon and you eat all of the fat. YES!
As to "why?" I say, "why not?" No cheese in this carbonara spin off lets you taste the bacon and eggs all the more clearly. Parmigiano, while extremely delicious, gets in the way of tasting that all-time classic smoky + yolky + mapley taste that any marvelously obese American knows about from the breakfast table.
1 lbs pasta (recommend spaghetti. Spoonable pastas make this interesting too: e.g. "macaroni without cheese" is possible)
1 lbs bacon
6 eggs, yolks and whites separated
.5 cup frozen peas*
4 cloves garlic, minced
1 TB coarse ground black pepper
1 TB kosher salt (tested using diamond crystal)
1 TB pure maple syrup
2 TB apple cider vinegar, divided
Get water for cooking pasta boiling salted at 2 TB DCKS per gallon. You probably only really need a quart if you're trying to do this fast.
Cut your bacon into slivers, about 1/4" long. Fry until fat is rendered and bacon is completely crisped. Don't worry, the fat's getting added back to the sauce: it's more important for texture accent that the bacon be very crisp.
Meanwhile, put the egg whites into a metal bowl with the maple syrup, minced garlic, and 1 TB of the vinegar.
Reserve the bacon, add the black pepper and cook until fragrant. Use the other 1 TB of vinegar to deglaze the pan and cook until acid is gone.
Pour the bacon fat mixture into the egg whites- don't worry if it cooks a little. Put the pasta in the boiling water. Set the metal bowl over the pasta water, turning it into a double boiler. Stir the eggs as the bowl heats until the white just starts to set, then remove from the heat. You'll get a clumpy white mess of egg white and grease that should be just barely runny. Take this mess and puree it until very smooth. I prefer to use an immersion blender. It should look something like mayonnaise when you're done. If it's too liquidy, return it to the bain marie and reblend it. If it's too thick, you can dilute with pasta water (so long as its not too hot). I've recently been messing with a puree sieve and a tamis, which yield astoundingly good textures, but I'm guessing most of y'all don't have those: the immersion blender should be plenty good anyways.
Add the frozen peas to the egg white puree.
If you want to serve with whole yolks: mix the egg white puree plus peas with the pasta and get that creamy with pasta water as above. Plate individual servings, swirling the noodles in one direction if using a stringy pasta to make a little nest in the center of the plate (or just piling the pasta with a crater in the middle if using non-stringy pasta). Deposit yolk in the nest and sprinkle bacon all around the centered yolks. Tip: I use Chinese soup spoons to store the yolks while I'm doing everything else- keeps them ready to deposit on the final dishes when plating.
*For those who hate peas: try using minced Italian parsley as a garnish, though I really think the crisp *pop* of properly cooked peas add a whole lot to this dish past the green color.
