(I realize that particular example applies only to me and a relatively small proportion of urban dwellers in New England, but still - point made.)
Anyway. I often make a version of this dish for one. But when on Christmas morning I was presented with a dozen and a half fresh eggs from my aunt and uncle's hens, it seemed like a perfect way to use them. Farm-fresh eggs, if you've never had them, are infinitely superior to store bought ones. They're also considerably more expensive and generally require a trip to a farmer's marker or at least a specialty store, so needless to say I don't get to enjoy them too often. I remembered having read a recipe for Fettucine Carbonara with Fried Eggs in the January issue of Bon Appetit (http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Fettucine-Carbonara-with-Fried-Eggs-351015) - apparently eggs on everything is expected to be a major dining trend for 2009 - and decided to whip a batch up.
First stop: the grocery store. Now, the Price Chopper in remote and mostly Anglo-Saxon-descended Keene, NH stocks a considerably different selection of food than the Market Basket in my Brazilian/Italian/Peruvian/Middle Eastern/Japanese/Indian/increasingly yuppie-ian Somerville, MA neighborhood. Nonetheless, I was able to procure a bunch of broccoli rabe from the produce section and a couple of thick slices of pancetta from the deli counter. The pasta presented a greater challenge. I had initally planned to make my own, using the sparkling new pasta-making attachment to my stand mixer that I had unwrapped the day prior, but unless we wanted to eat at about 9pm (not that I would have minded, but the fam would have starved in the meantime), time did not allow. I was determined to use fresh pasta regardless, but the only linguine the grocery stocked in the correctly sized package was tricolor, and I have bad memories of a terrible tricolor rotini purchased in bulk at Sam's Club some years ago. "It's festive!" my mother argued, gesturing at the packet of off-white, green, and orange noodles. Well, sort of. I decided to roll with it and away to the checkout line we went.
The preparation was a cinch. First, I whisked the eggs, the shredded cheeses, the minced garlic, and the pepper in a bowl. Then I chopped the pancetta (freeze it for a bit first; I forgot and wound up having to wage a considerable battle with a serrated knife) and tossed it in a skillet over medium heat to render and crisp. Then I stripped the broccoli rabe of its plethora of leaves (the kitchen sink looked like a small lettuce-packing facility had exploded in it), chopped it into twoish inch lengths, and tossed it into a pot of salted boiling water along with the fresh linguine to cook for three minutes before draining it and reserving 1/2 cup of the cooking liquid.
Now came the tricky part - saucing the pasta. I threw it back in the pot along with the pancetta (take it out of the skillet with a slotted spoon - you want the drippings for later!). The recipe directs that you dump the egg mixture right in along with the reserved water, but that seemed likely to make the egg cook prematurely, so I ladled a bit of the cooking water into the eggs first to warm them up (I believe real cooks would call this tempering the egg mixture) before pouring the whole lot in and mixing it up into a glorious eggy cheesy bacony mess. Almost done - but then there were the fried eggs to contend with.
If I have to explain this part to you, you should probably get out of the kitchen. It couldn't be easier - heat the drippings-laden skillet back up to medium, crack the eggs and slide them in, cook on one side until the whites are white and then flip and cook until just set. Important: don't overcook the yolk! Then, all there is to do is plate the noodles and deposit a fried egg prettily atop.
Alas, I made a mistake. The number one rule of cooking is to taste, taste, taste, and that is precisely where I erred. The broccolini, you see, was bitter. Not inedibly bitter, but enough so that it was the primary flavor component in the dish, which was really too bad, because the pancetta had a lovely, distinctly charcuterie-eque flavor quite different from bacon and the sauce was so delicate that was hard pressed to shine through. The dish overall would not have suffered from a lack of incorporated broccolini, and such a bitter bunch could have been salvaged cooked differently and served aside. In fact, I think it would have been superb.
So the moral of this story is, don't just go throwing things into the pot all willy-nilly without sampling them.
And I suppose in the end it was just as well that I accidentally used the regular eggs instead of the beautiful just-laid ones. Oops...
