How to make the King of Carbonara’s famous pasta
Sign up now: Weekly recommendations for the best eats in town
- Chef Luciano Monosilio, "King of Carbonara," perfects the dish at his Rome restaurant, where 200 daily orders are placed for his €19 spaghetti.
- His famous carbonara and a vegetarian pasta are now available in Singapore at the newly opened Casa Vostra at Tampines Mall.
- Monosilio adapted his carbonara recipe with pasteurised eggs, aged guanciale, and a Pecorino-Grana Padano cheese mix for international palates.
AI generated
SINGAPORE –To say that Italian chef Luciano Monosilio has perfected the art of making spaghetti alla carbonara might be an understatement.
It is the star dish at the 42-year-old’s 100-seat restaurant in Rome, Luciano Cucina Italiana. To turn out consistently good plates of the Roman pasta dish, the chefs have to follow the method to the letter. Of the 240 people who dine there every day, 200 of them order the dish, at €19 (S$28) a plate.
The way he has elevated the homespun dish has earned him the name King of Carbonara, coined by a New York Times journalist who ate it in 2012 at Pipero Al Rex, a one-Michelin-starred restaurant in Rome that the chef worked at. That was the year the restaurant obtained its star, he says.
Cue floods of American diners to the restaurant. More diners from all over the world started going there, after he posted YouTube videos of himself making the dish around that time.
He says it was not common then for fine-dining restaurants to serve homely pasta dishes.
“It was very strange to serve a traditional plate of pasta in a Michelin-starred restaurant at that time,” he adds. “Michelin-starred restaurants are only for funny food, you know?”
Diners can order his famous Spaghetti Alla Carbonara at the newly opened 58-seat Casa Vostra at Tampines Mall, or make it at home using the recipe he has given The Straits Times.
The chef was in Singapore recently to train the kitchen team to make the dish, and another pasta offering with oyster mushrooms. He also cooked a sold-out guest chef dinner at Antonio Miscellaneo’s La Bottega Enoteca in Joo Chiat Road.
Miscellaneo, 54, who started Casa Vostra with restaurant group Ebb & Flow, says the restaurant will serve two of Monosilio’s pastas: Luciano’s Spaghetti Alla Carbonara ($21) and Luciano’s Spaghetti Ai Cardoncelli ($18), a vegetarian option with oyster mushrooms, garlic, olive oil, parsley and chilli.
For now, both will be available only at the Tampines restaurant, but he does not rule out serving them at the brand’s outlets at Raffles City and Jem later.
Monosilio says he started serving the dish in 2009, when the restaurant Pipero was located in the city of Albano, about 25km from Rome. He carried on serving it when the restaurant moved to Rome.
Over the years, however, he tweaked the recipe.
At his restaurant, Luciano Cucina Italiana, he uses pasteurised egg yolks for food safety reasons. The guanciale or cured pork cheek, a key ingredient, is aged for four months, three of them in-house, with a special spice rub.
In the beginning, he used only Pecorino cheese.
“When my clientele started to become more international, people were complaining a lot that it was too salty,” he says. “So I use a mix of Pecorino and Grana Padano to make the flavour more comfortable for people.”
The chef also has a pizzeria in Rome called Il Maratoneta, and is a partner of an Italian restaurant in Cape Town, South Africa, called Scala Pasta/Bar.
As a young chef, he did not relish the title of King of Carbonara.
He says: “I was young, and I was a Michelin-starred chef. When I got older, I started to think differently. I made peace with carbonara a long time ago, because it has been very good for business for me. I will never get tired or bored of it.”
Two of Luciano Monosilio's pasta dishes are on the menu at Casa Vostra at Tampines Mall: Luciano's Spaghetti Alla Carbonara (foreground) and Luciano's Spaghetti Ai Cardoncelli.
ST PHOTO: NG SOR LUAN
Here is Luciano Monosilio’s carbonara recipe:
Luciano’s Spaghetti Alla Carbonara
Ingredients
280g spaghetti
200g guanciale (cured pork cheek), diced into 1cm cubes
4 yolks from pasteurised eggs
30g Grana Padano cheese, grated
20g Pecorino romano cheese, grated, plus more for serving
2g black pepper, freshly ground, plus more for serving
Method
Make the base: Cook the pasta in boiling salted water according to packet instructions. Fry the guanciale cubes in a dry pan without adding oil, until crispy on the outside and soft inside. In a large bowl, whisk together the egg yolks with the Grana Padano and Pecorino romano cheeses, and the rendered fat from the cooked guanciale. Let the mixture rest while the pasta cooks.
Bring it together: Once the pasta is cooked, drain and add it to the large bowl. Toss it with the mixture, ground pepper and guanciale cubes, adding a little warm pasta water. Mix until everything is creamy.
Finishing touches: Plate the pasta, grate more Pecorino cheese over each portion and finish with a grind of black pepper. Serve at the right temperature: not cold, not hot, but warm.
Serves four
Casa Vostra is at 01-33A Tampines Mall, 4 Tampines Central 5, and is open from 11.30am to 10pm daily. For more information, go to casavostra.sg
