Calvin Trillin, the brilliant (and funny) writer, once speculated that if Italians, rather than the English, had landed at Plymouth, we would joyously be eating spaghetti carbonara at Thanksgiving instead of his hated turkey. Like Trillin, HG is a lover of this dish which, as legend would have it, was developed after WWII when GI’s stationed in Italy would share bacon and eggs with the hungry populace. It is deceptively simple to prepare: Room temperature eggs are beaten in a warm bowl with plenty of parmesan cheese and crisp cooked bacon (or pancetta, or the cured pig jowl known as guanciale). The dish is topped with abundant ground black pepper and chopped flat leaf parsley. Goes nicely with a rough Italian wine like Montepulciano d’Abruzze. Last week, Gifted daughter Lesley R. did her own variation on this dish. Alongside two different varieties of Prince Edward Island bacon, Lesley R. added sautéed zucchini and fresh fava beans which created the perfect, complementary textures to the classic creaminess of carbonara. Hooray for innovation.
Yum.
Good thing Leif et al didn’t hang on or the national dish might be lutefisk!
(Old joke about Scandinavian weddings and their door prizes: second prize, night with the bride; first prize, twenty pounds of lutefisk).
Never tasted lutefisk. Gather it is an unattractive relative of schmaltz herring.
CT, by the way, is a fellow Eli. I’ve read much of his oeuvre. Especially have loved his vulgar poems for The Nation, and his novel, “Tepper is Not Going Out”.
Yes,Trillin is one of my favorites. When I lived in New York I would meet him on Sunday at Russ & Daughters, the venerable Lower East Side smoked fish emporium. A nice man with a big appetite.
I’m envious. Was he as conversational as he is writerly?