There are two things I find interesting about the history of food. Firstly, I find the stories (often vague and disputed, adding to the mystery) behind their origins completely fascinating and in order to treasure and protect these I think the authentic versions of popular dishes we cook today should be celebrated. Secondly, I find it really strange that classic dishes from the past tend to have memorable names (carbonara, shepherd’s pie, shakshuka and so on) while the vast majority of recipes these days seem to have very bland names that essentially just list the key ingredients of the dish. I’m guilty of this myself (see Walnut and Cavolo Nero Pasta). Yes it tells the reader what they’re getting, but there’s something missing. There’s no romantic backstory, no connection to the world at the time the dish emerged.

So this brings me on to Kalebonara and a February weekend on which I had already planned to cook some form of kale pasta when I stumbled across a story about a ‘carbonara’ recipe on the NY Times causing uproar because of how it tinkered with the original recipe. Had I not seen that, I may well have titled this post ‘Kale Carbonara’. But if a classic recipe like carbonara shouldn’t be tinkered with, and too few new recipes have proper names, denying them a place in history, then it is time to rectify this. And so Kalebonara was born. So excited was I about this that I even made my own pasta for the occasion – some spinach pici made of 00 flour and spinach only – but spaghetti would be wonderful for this, too.