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Food

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 2 , 2022. SECTION E EZ EE

HOW TO

Converting your favorite

recipe to work in an

Instant Pot may be easier

than you think. E6

EAT VORACIOUSLY

Oat-based griddle cakes

make a deceptively easy

meal, whenever you

choose to eat them. E2

MORE AT WASHINGTONPOST.COM

Creamy Cannellini Bean Rigatoni E2

Cream-Fried Eggs E3

Vegetable Fried Quinoa E3

Chat At noon: l ive.washingtonpost.com

BY BECKY KRYSTAL

Eggs, carbs, cheese and cured meat is a combina-

tion I enjoy quite often. Pizza. Breakfast sandwiches.

Burritos. Quiche.

The thing is, I had not, until recently, partaken in

this magical quartet in one of their more obvious,

beloved iterations: spaghetti carbonara.

To my colleagues, this was a fairly shocking

admission. But they’ve recovered from my revela-

tion, at least enough to indulge me in my quest to

figure out how to make a great version of this Italian

dish that is a particular Roman specialty.

Spaghetti carbonara consists of pasta coated in an

egg-and-cheese-based sauce that’s enlivened with

lots of black pepper and bits of cured meat, which in

Italy is typically guanciale, though pancetta is partic-

ularly common in other countries.

“I think it’s immensely satisfying,” says cookbook

author Giuliano Hazan, the source of the recipe I’ve

adapted, as well as the son of legendary Italian food

authority Marcella Hazan. The richness of the eggs,

the substance of the meat and, of course, the flavor

and texture of the cheese are a perfect pasta storm.

Lest you think that carbonara is not as beloved in

its hometown as the legend is made out to be, let

cookbook author and Eternal City resident Kristina

Gill set the record straight: “They live and die by

carbonara in Rome.” You’ll find it in restaurants and

in homes, with perhaps as many opinions about how

it should be made as places it’s eaten. “Everybody has

SEE CARBONARA ON E8

Incomparable carbonara

Pasta with eggs, cheese and cured pork is the next best thing to a ticket to Rome

REY LOPEZ FOR THE WASHINGTON POST; FOOD STYLING BY LISA CHERKASKY FOR THE WASHINGTON POST

BY TAMAR HASPEL

Special to The Washington Post

It’s a minefield, the grocery
store. Each aisle is jammed with
health claims, nutrition info and
out-and-out sales pitches. And all
of it is geared toward getting you
to buy.
And although your supermar-
ket is generally not lying to you —
there are laws about what you
can and can’t put on a food pack-
age — it’s definitely not always on
the up-and-up. To help you make
sense of packaging claims, I bring
you the Label Translator, here to
tell you what those confusing la-
bels really mean.
Label: “Multigrain” (Pep-
peridge Farm Farmhouse multi-
grain bread)
Translation: “More than one
grain that might or might not be
a whole grain.”
The “multigrain” is in big let-
ters on the front, but in little let-
ters on the back, we have the first
ingredient: enriched wheat flour.
That’s garden-variety refined
white flour, emphatically not
whole grain. Next there’s water,
sugar, yeast, sunflower seeds and
wheat berries. When we get to the
“2% or less” portion of the label,
we find wheat gluten, corn meal,
pearled barley, rye, triticale and
malted barley flour. This is white
bread with whole-grain window
dressing.
Bottom line, there’s no way to
tell what percent of the grains are
whole unless you go all-in and get
the “100% whole wheat” or “100%
whole grain” bread.
Label: “Less Processed” (Dom-
ino Golden Sugar)
Translation: “We think you’re
not very smart.”
To make sugar white, proces-
sors have to remove plant fibers
and molasses, which give the sug-
ar a brown color. Take out less of
those, and you have “golden sug-
ar.” It is indeed less processed, as
it doesn’t undergo the final refin-
ing step that makes sugar pure
white. No shade of sugar is any
better or worse for you than any
other, but Domino figures if you
know it’s “less processed,” you’ll
think it’s better.
Label: “Packed in France” (The
Wild Mushroom Co. Dried Gour-
met Mix Mushrooms)
Translation: These could be
from absolutely anywhere except
France.
The dried mushrooms in the
bag are from Poland, Serbia,
R omania, Montenegro, Macedo-
nia, Bulgaria, Chile, Peru, Bosnia
and/or Hungary. But once you
ship them to France, they’re
French, right?
Label: Bright colors and car-
toon characters (Danimals
smoothies for kids)
Translation: Regular
smoothies, but with more sugar.
A Danimals “strawberry fla-
vor” yogurt smoothie (there are
no strawberries in it), has 7 grams
of added sugar in a 50-calorie
serving. That means more than
SEE UNEARTHED ON E4

UNEARTHED

On a label,

any large

type might

mislead

you’re used to with breasts. And

in addition to quick-cooking

dishes, thighs and quarters have

the versatility to stand up to

longer cooking methods, such as

braising, meaning you can do

more with these cuts.

Chicken quarters and thighs

also have a significant price

a dvantage. A U.S. Agriculture

D epartment report released

r ecently listed the average price

SEE CHICKEN QUARTERS ON E4

For starters, dark meat simply

has more flavor thanks to its

higher fat content — and in my

kitchen, flavor reigns supreme.

(If you are concerned about your

fat intake, you can trim or re-

move the skin.) If speed is what

you’re after, anything boneless,

skinless chicken breasts can do,

boneless, skinless chicken thighs

can do better. The two are inter-

changeable in recipes, allowing

you to enjoy the same efficiency

sume meat with as little involve-

ment as possible in the process.

Well, America, it’s time to

e scape the chicken breast choke-

hold and embrace more flavorful

and forgiving cuts of fowl: chick-

en quarters and thighs. (While

much of the following applies to

drumsticks as well, their stringy

tendons and high bone-to-meat

ratio make them less versatile as

the sole cut of chicken in reci-

pes.)

And never have I agreed more.

America has an obsession with

white meat, particularly bone-

less, skinless chicken breasts,

f avoring them for the ease and

efficiency with which they can be

cooked and consumed. The lack

of skin and bones helps people

dissociate from the fact that the

food they’re consuming was once

a living, breathing animal, sup-

porting their cognitive disso-

nance around wanting to con-

BY AARON HUTCHERSON

While developing a recipe for

smothered chicken, I put out a

call on Twitter to get a sense of

how people prepare it in their

own kitchens. I asked about

things such as what vegetables

they include and which cut of

chicken they prefer to use. To the

latter, food blogger Marta Rivera

Diaz replied: “Dark meat be-

cause I actually love myself.”

HOW TO

When cooking chicken, it’s time to embrace the dark side

RECIPE ON PAGE E8: Spaghetti Carbonara