Before Farmer Aaron and I (that’s Farmer Tanya in case you’ve been wondering) were even dating, we did a few unicycle tours together. You know, cycling tours but on one wheel instead of two.
Bonus points if you can identify us in this photo. 😉
Many years ago we did a tour from Cologne, Germany, to Barcelona, Spain — Unicycle Across France, you could call it, with Luxembourg and bits of Germany and Spain thrown in. You might imagine riding that many miles on one wheel would require a lot of calories, and you would be absolutely right.
We ate countless scoops of gelato. Tons of fruit. Giant chunks of freshly-baked breads. Countless crepes. Ooh, and those pain au chocolat … yes please. But one of our favorite evening meal refuels was spaghetti carbonara. This super creamy pasta dish had the carbs, the fat, and the flavor we craved.
No, traditionally, the dish doesn’t have mushrooms and peas in it; I just like to play around.
As we moved ever closer to the Mediterranean, one direct-drive pedal at a time, the dish just got better and better. It began coming to the table with a raw egg sitting on top of the pasta, waiting for us to stir it in and get to eating.
One of the perks of unicycling up to 120 kilometers a day is that you can eat a giant plate of pasta like that, then order seconds, then go out for that gelato.
After the unicycle tour was over, it took me a while to get around to trying to make spaghetti carbonara in my own kitchen. And even though I’ve played around with the recipe a lot, it never tastes quite as good as it did after unicycling for ten hours along the fields and rivers of France.
Still, it’s delicious. It’s definitely a standby favorite in our house, and not just for the nostalgia factor. You’ve got salty, crispy bacon. Perfectly cooked noodles. All covered in an eggy, cheesy sauce of superb creaminess.
Ready? I’d recommend trying this New York Times recipe:Â https://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/12965-spaghetti-carbonara
The thing is, you’ll definitely want to source some excellent eggs for this recipe. Especially if you want to go for that European flair and serve your pasta with a whole raw egg on top. But fear not, I know where you can get some. Come out to our place and we’ll help you get your own, still warm, straight from the coop, if you’d like.
Let’s do this.
Easily identifiable, even after “all these years.” 🙂 So what do I win?
I am going to have to give this recipe a try!