Pasta alla carbonara from The Zuni Cafe Cookbook: A Compendium of Recipes and Cooking Lessons from San Francisco's Beloved Restaurant (page 210) by Judy Rodgers

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Ingredients

bacon
ricotta cheese
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EYB Comments

Can substitute penne pasta or bucatini pasta for spaghetti pasta, sugar snap peas or fava beans for peas, and pecorino Sardo cheese for pecorino Romano cheese.

Where’s the full recipe - why can I only see the ingredients?

Always check the publication for a full list of ingredients. An Eat Your Books index lists the main ingredients and does not include 'store-cupboard ingredients' (salt, pepper, oil, flour, etc.) - unless called for in significant quantity.

Notes about this recipe

Eat Your Books

Can substitute penne pasta or bucatini pasta for spaghetti pasta, sugar snap peas or fava beans for peas, and pecorino Sardo cheese for pecorino Romano cheese.
Lepa on February 06, 2020

This was fine but not as good as the more traditional carbonaras I have made. I'll keep looking for my ideal recipe.
Rinshin on March 14, 2019

Good use of small quantity of ricotta you have leftover and few eggs. I made this with 3 extra large eggs as well as leftover green soy beans. Added about 2/3 C of pasta water to thin out the sauce to our liking. Not as smooth as I hoped, but the taste was quite good and simple to make. Photo added.
clcorbi on October 29, 2017

Yum. Per Wester's comment, I decided to totally omit the peas. Otherwise, I followed the recipe as written. This isn't a traditional carbonara, and my sauce didn't get quite as silky as I expected--then again, the author does say that the sauce forms curds because of the ricotta, so I guess I shouldn't have been surprised. At any rate, the result was quite good. I am still on the lookout for a more traditional carbonara recipe--I turned to this one because I had ricotta to use up. If I find myself in that situation again, I would definitely repeat this.
wester on January 21, 2011

The ricotta in the sauce was brilliant, it made a smooth creamy sauce, but not as heavy as it would have been with cream. The amount of salt in the pasta was much smaller than I usually use, but it worked out fine. However, I was not very happy with the addition of peas. They were not bad, they just didn't add much, so I thought they just distracted from the brilliance of the rest of the sauce. In short, I will make this again, but without the peas.