The Legend of Carbonara
Greetings, Italophiles
I was all set to write about Raphael, whose birthday is today.
But I decided to do a 180 after I watched this insanely good mini-movie about the legend of how Carbonara was created.
Barilla pulled out all the stops to make this short film, even including one of my favorite Italian stars Claudio Santamaria in the role of the chef. Promising young actor Yonv Joseph played the American soldier.
The true origins of Carbonara remain a bit muddled, a fact that was recently discussed on the Rome episode of Stanley Tucci’s Searching for Italy while he hung out in the kitchen at Pommidoro.
But this piece from Gambero Rosso International claims that the recipe originated in the U.S. in the 1950s and not in WWII Rome:
The first carbonara recipe seems to have been published in the United States in 1952 in a guide to restaurants in a district of Chicago entitled “An extraordinary guide to what is cooking on Chicago’s Near North Side” by Patricia Bronté. In the review of the restaurant “Armando’s” the author reports a rather precise recipe and you can’t go wrong: it’s definitely the carbonara we all know. The appearance of the first Italian recipe (but not as we know it today) is instead dated August 1954, when it appeared in the magazine La Cucina Italiana.
Whatever the real story is, I really love Barilla’s dramatization of the carbonara legend. The company has also teamed up with Massimo Bottura (featured in the Bologna episode of the Tucci show) to make #carbonaraday count. The initiative “Carebonara” will donate one million pasta dishes to Bottura’s Food for Soul and Refettorios around the world.
Take care of each other and enjoy some carbonara!
A presto,
Melanie