Pasta! Who doesn’t like long, thin spaghetti strings cooked ‘al dente’ that you can play with while eating? In Apennine Peninsula ‘macaroni’ has a special place in the heart of every Italian person. Everyone has its favourite type of ‘pasta’ or sauce and discussing which kind of noodles best fits the flavouring is one of the typical Italian activities. One of the most famous and traditional dishes is ‘spaghetti alla carbonara’ – a Roman speciality based on eggs, cheese, bacon and black pepper. Everything mixed in a big plate of spaghetti. Simple and delicious, full of calories but doubtlessly worth a sin.

There are also some stories behind this Roman dish describing its origins. One theory says that the recipe was invented by American troops staying in Italy during the II World War. Typical American breakfast… eggs and bacon. What happens if you mix it with Italian pasta… carbonara!! The dish got to be popular just after the War, when the restaurants chiefs started to use this idea in their trattorias, giving it afterwards a real recipe.
The other hypothesis says that the plate was invented by charcoal-burners called in Roman dialect ‘carbonari’, which used to eat a plate of eggs and cheese (cacio).

Carbonara is well-known around the world, although according to Italian Academy of Cooking (Accademia Italiana della cucina) it is the most falsified dish!! There is therefore no other way, than just come to Rome, sit down in some decent ‘trattoria’ and delight yourself with the one&only original carbonara. I bet you won’t regret it for a second!

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