James Kenji Lopez-Alt
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Chive blossom carbonara
🕑 Added 2024-08-20 13:00:13 +0000 UTC
“You can eat this pansies,” says my daughter Alicia to her brother Wombat* as they poke their way down the dock to my floating home.
*not his real name.
A few months ago she discovered that many of the flowers she sees around town are edible, and as with anything new she learns, she is very eager to teach her littler brother. Pansies, nasturtium, daisy petals, and arugula flowers are top choice right now, as are chive blossoms, which grown in pretty, geometric, purplish-pink balls with dozens of flours in each tuft.
“Technically you can eat the pansies, but that one belongs to the neighbor so not without asking!,” I chime in.
“Papa,” she says in her you know better than this voice, “they won’t mind.”
I remind her it’s still better to ask before going inside. Later, I find a container of chive flowers, pansies, and nasturtium deposited with muddy little fingerprints on the kitchen counter. I wash them and don’t question where they came from.
Pansies Look pretty on the avocado toast at a fancy cafe, but they don’t offer much flavorwise. Nasturtium, on the other hand, has an onion-y bite and distinct sweetness to the flowers (daisy petals have a similar flavor, though far more muted). Nasturtium leaves have a peppery bite that is excellent raw or wilted into vegetable soups. Arugula flowers have an even more intense pepperiness that makes them a potent garnish for salads.
But those chive blossoms are my favorite edible flower. They have fantastic flavor that gives you a mellower version of that onion-y bite, but with a hint of sweetness from the drop of nectar inside each flower. The sweet and savory nature of them remind me a lot of the similar qualities you get in certain types of cured pork, like prosciutto or guanciale, so when Alicia and Wombat ended up with handfuls of blossoms, my first thought was to get them into a plate of pasta inspired by the flavors of carbonara.
Stirring up Tradition
To make it, I beat a few eggs together with a healthy grating of Pecorino cheese along with some grinds of black pepper. While a traditional carbonara recipe starts with rendering guanciale or pancetta, I’m not using any cured meat here, instead replacing the rendered fat with some extra virgin olive oil. The rest of the process is pretty classic. I cook the pasta (using a small volume of water in order to produce extra-starchy pasta water that encourages a creamy emulsion in the sauce), then toss it, hot, with the beats egg mixture, using the residual heat of the pasta and a few passes over the stovetop to cook the eggs into a creamy, velvety, glossy consistency.
If you’d like, you can use my friend Daniel Gritzer’s double-boiler method, which makes it near foolproof to nail your carbonara, ensuring that it’s not under-cooked and watery, nor overcooked and scrambled or greasy. You can also follow along on my existing classic carbonara video. Or you can just jump right in and try it, because even if the eggs are a little over or under-cooked, the dish will still taste delicious (ample pecorino and chive blossoms cover a multitude of sins.)
What about the Water?
Some quick notes on that pasta water, by the way.
Tradition dictates that pasta should be cooked in a large volume of water in order for it to come out properly al dente. The idea is that with a larger volume of water, it will return to a boil faster after adding the pasta, therefore the pasta will cook better. Testing, however, doesn’t bear this out. While a smaller volume of water may drop more significantly in temperature when adding pasta to it, this drop is recovered much faster than the smaller drop in a large volume of water, simply because it takes less energy to reheat a smaller volume of water. Moreover, a larger volume of water has more surface area for energy loss, leading to less efficient heating.
When tested (and tasted) side by side, dry pasta cooked in a small volume of water is indistinguishable from pasta cooked in a large volume of water. Moreover, using a small volume offers several advantages. It’s more energy efficient. It’s more resourceful and wastes less water. Finally, it creates extra-concentrated pasta water that’s packed with emulsifying starches that will make your sauces cling to your pasta much better.
I'm not sure how useful the specific recipe is for anyone who doesn't grow their own chives (or have a neighbor who does), but the lessons in how to make an emulsified creamy egg sauce can form the backbone of any number of improvised dishes and is a useful skill to have.
Anyhow, I've got a chive flower stuck in my teeth. Wombat! Alicia! Can you go see if you can go nab some dental floss from the neighbors? I'm sure they won't mind.
Chive Blossom Carbanara
Every recipe I publish here is personally tested, tasted, and approved.
What I like about this recipe:
- Chive blossoms have a balanced savoriness and sweetness that parallels the role pork plays in a traditional carbonara recipe.
- The pale purple chive flowers look gorgeous against the rich yellow backdrop the egg yolks.
- Using a smaller volume of water makes starchier pasta water than improves its emulsifying powers while proving to not be a detriment to pasta texture.
YIELD:
Serves 4
ACTIVE TIME:
15 minutes
TOTAL TIME:
15 minutes
Notes: Any salt will do, but I usually keep kosher on hand because it's easier to pinch. Any pasta will also do, but long thin shapes like spaghetti or bucatini are great, as are short tubular shapes with ridges like rigatoni.
Ingredients:
- Kosher salt (see notes)
- 1 pound (450g) dried spaghetti or bucatini (see notes)
- 2 tablespoons (30ml) extra-virgin olive oil
- 3 whole eggs plus 3 yolks
- 1/2 cup grated Pecorino Romano, Parmigiano-Reggiano, or a mix (about 2 ounces; 50g), plus more for serving
- 1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper (ground medium-coarse), plus more for serving
- A handful of chive flowers and/or thinly sliced fresh chives (about 1/2 ounce; 10g)
1. Fill a 12-inch sauté or straight-sided skillet with water to about an inch from the lip. Lightly salt the water, and bring to a boil over high heat. Add the pasta and cook, stirring occasionally, until al dente, about 1 minute less than the package directions.
2. Meanwhile, whisk together the olive oil, eggs and yolks, cheese, and black pepper.
3. When the pasta is cooked, transfer it to the bowl with the egg mixture, using tongs and allowing the extra pasta water clinging to the pasta to transfer to the bowl with the egg mixture
4. Add the chives and blossoms and stir vigorously until the sauce is velvety and glossy and sticks to the spaghetti. If the sauce looks watery or loose, very briefly hold the bowl in the saucepan of hot water leftover from the spaghetti for a few seconds at a time, heating and stirring until the sauce becomes glossy.
5. Season to taste with more salt and pepper. Transfer to a serving bowl and top with a grating of cheese and the reserved chives and flowers.
Comments
Allen Lee Hubby and Emerson Eller da Silva
We are so lucky that our corner 7-11 carries an abundant supply of chive blossoms. :P
James Kenji Lopez-Alt
On a burner that really struggles to maintain heat using a lid definitely helps, but those might be one of the rare cases where taking the time to bring a larger volume of water to a boil may help simply because your refractory period to regain heat is too long with a really weak burner.
Rosie J
I read your pasta water notes with interest - I am usually cooking for 8-10 on small burner stoves (on boats) and struggle to get the water back to the boil, so it cooks in warm-ish water which results in an undesirable texture. I’m going to play around with this a bit and figure out how little water I can get away with, sounds like that will help. I’m also very loyal to your 5 park gnocchi peas recipe but end up with the sauce being very tight. This makes sense as trying to “thin” it out with wildly starch saturated water I cooked the Croatian gnocchi in which comes coated in some kind of semolina. Thanks for thought provoking content as ever!!
