Cooking with the Legal Humanities: Daniel Hourigan’s Carbonara

A note from Daniel on the recipe:

This recipe is a sweet variation on a traditional carbonara with the addition of red capsicum and balsamic vinegar. With a few simple substitutions, like some diced eggplant and julienned cayenne chillies for the bacon, this can easily become a vegetarian dish, in which instance I recommend finding something to replace the umami notes of the egg yolks with something like two teaspoons of porcini powder and then reducing the use of salt somewhat.

This is a dish that reminds me of all that I love about law and literature, the sweet intellectual vivacity and adaptability of a hybrid discourse that looks to reïnvent both of its primary fields.

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Serves 6

Ingredients

• 1 cup of white onion, finely chopped
• 1 cup of red capsicum, finely chopped
• 3 garlic cloves, crushed & roughly chopped
• 10 mushrooms, quartered
• 5 rounds of short-cut bacon
• 1 tbsp of unsalted cultured/European butter
• 3 egg yolks
• ½ cup of Grana Padano, grated
• ½ cup of Parmigiano Reggiano, grated
• Additional grated Parmigiano Reggiano to serve
• 1 cup of chicken or veal stock
• ½ cup of parsley, chiffonade
• ½ cup of basil, chiffonade
• Olive oil
• 3 tbsp of aged balsamic vinegar
• 1 tbsp of smokey paprika
• Salt
• Pepper
• 4 bay leaves
• Spaghetti or other long and thin pasta, such as tagliatelle or fettuccine, to serve 6

Method

1. Preheat fan-force oven to 180C
2. Set slices of bacon on a roasting tray lined with baking paper
3. Season the bacon slices with splashes of olive oil and balsamic vinegar, then season with pepper and paprika
4. Bake the bacon for 12-15 minutes or until the edges of the meat begin to crisp
5. Once cooked, set aside on paper towel to drain; chop when cool enough to handle
6. Sauté the vegetables on a medium heat in a little olive oil until the onion is transparent in a wide-based saucepan
7. Add the mushrooms and a bay leaf, season with a pinch of salt, and cook for 5 minutes at medium
8. Add the butter and cook at medium for a further 10-15 minutes
9. By now the mushrooms and onion have taken on a bit of colour to indicate caramelisation (the Maillard reaction caused by the proteins and amino acids in the butter), add the chicken stock and bring to a light simmer
10. Once at a light simmer, turn the heat to low and put a lid on the saucepan, allow to cook covered for 10 minutes (the more time you can give this step the better and more complex the flavours will become, but 1 cup of stock is good for 10 mins so vary volume accordingly)
11. While the sauce is simmering bring a large pot of cold salted water to the boil with 3 bay leaves
12. Cook the pasta to al dente per the packet instructions or just under al dente if you prefer your pasta precisely al dente upon serving
13. Whisk egg yolks together with a pinch of salt and pepper
14. Chiffonade the parsley and basil
15. Once the pasta is cooked, reserve 1 cup of the pasta water
16. Uncover the sauce, lower the heat to lowest and stir briefly, then add the cooked pasta directly to the pan (we want some of the residual pasta water to come with it) along with the chopped bacon, mixed egg, grated cheeses, herb chiffonade, and cup of pasta water.
17. Gently work the pasta and other ingredients together in the pan. It will be ready once all of the pasta takes on a slightly yellow hue, indicating an even distribution of the sauce and egg yolks.
18. Turn off the heat and serve the pasta with a generous garnish of grated Parmigiano Reggiano.

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Daniel Hourigan is Lecturer in English Literature at the University of Southern Queensland. He is the author of, amongst other things, Law and Enjoyment: Power, Pleasure and Psychoanalysis (Routledge 2015), ‘Postmodern Anarchy in the Modern Legal Psyche: Law, Anarchy and Psychoanalytic Philosophy’ (2012) 21 Griffith Law Review 330, and, most recently, ‘Specters and Psychoanalysis in the Turn to Law and Affect’ (2017) Law and Literature (doi: 10.1080/1535685X.2017.1327694).

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‘Cooking with the Legal Humanities’ is a series of blog posts sharing recipes from the many keen cooks who lurk within the global cultural legal community.

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