By: Ann Hood, The Daily Beast

The Quest for the Perfect Spaghetti Carbonara

Ann Hood, the author of the new book ‘Kitchen Yarns,’ recounts how she first discovered this creamy pasta dish and shares her personal recipe for it.

In the Italian American household where I grew up, red sauce ruled. Every Monday, my grandmother Mama Rose made gallons of it in a giant tarnished pot. She started that sauce by cooking sausage in oil, then frying onions in that same oil and adding various forms of canned tomatoes: crushed, pureed, paste. Without measuring, she’d toss in secret ingredients. Red wine. Sugar. Salt and pepper. Parsley from her garden. Always stirring and tasting and shaking her head, dissatisfied, until finally she got it just right. At which point the sauce simmered until, as Mama Rose used to say, it wasn’t bitter.

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