The recipe I use is not my own, I got it from a good friend's mom (Hello Tita Bebot) but I didn't watch her do (but I swear, I followed everything she texted me!) it so while the output my execution of her recipe isn't that bad (Jewel: “Sarap nito...”), I'm pretty sure there's something I did wrong or there's still a lot of room for improvement.
The recipe basically calls for bacon (and/or ham), cream of mushroom, heavy cream, evaporated milk, and pasta. The first time I tried it wasn't a failure but the taste I was going for was different. Have you tried Fazoli's Carbonara? That's what I want! Very savory and full of flavor but not overloaded with meat and creamy but doesn't tastes like milk (the evaporated milk wasn’t enough clue for me, huh?). Another thing I didn't like about my version is it dries up too fast. You have to gobble up everything before it turns cold.

Now I have to refine my Carbonara skills in time for our Christmas potluck in the office. I'm in charge of the sauce and after the success of my buco pandan, I can't let this one ruin my reputation.

That shouldn’t be too hard, right? Looking for the perfect Carbonara recipe? Man, it was looking working on my undergrad thesis all over again. As it turns out, there’s a number of ways to do it. Here’s what I got so far:

1. MEAT

You can pretty much any kind of meat but here are the usual suspects.

bacon/ chicken / sweet ham / pancetta

Bacon [The Cook’s Thesaurus]	Pancetta [Chef Donhensley]

2. SAUCE

There’s cream and heavy cream. These are the main

ingredients for the sauce. I wanted to list down all the combinations but it won’t be done until Christmas.

heavy cream / cream of mushroom / wine or stock / butter / egg / egg yolk

3. PASTA

Any would do!

4. HOW TO COOK IT

This part still concerns the sauce.

a. put the sauce in the pan after cooking the meat, wait for it to thicken.

b. put pasta in the pan after cooking the meat, then add the sauce.

c. cook meat, boil pasta, whisk sauce, then mix together.

5. ADD-ONS/TOPPINGS:

cheese / herbs / spices

So with this at hand, how the heck am I going to find the right recipe for me? Trying them all is not a practical option but I'd probably go for the bacon + [(heavy cream + egg yolk) - MILK] + fettuccine + cheese combo.