Carbonara. No cream was harmed during the creation of this dish.

My recipe (speaking as someone from Rome, my tastes might be different):

Ingredients:

• 1 egg yolk per person + 1 full egg. (E.g., 2 people = 2 yolks + 1 egg)
• pecorino romano (a lot). I put also a 20%-ish of parmigiano to balance the taste.
• black pepper, freshly ground.
• guanciale (traditionally, I live abroad and often use pancetta - which is less fat and might require a little bit of olive oil)

Usually you want spaghetti or maybe rigatoni, fettuccine or similar (like OP) tend to suck too much the sauce and are also heavier (it makes sense that they used many full eggs).

Preparation: You beat the eggs and add scraped pecorino until the result is thick. You add pepper and a bit of salt to it as well and mix.

In a pan with no oil or butter you put the guanciale and you let it sweat. You let it fry in its own fat until it's like you want it. You can take a couple of teaspoons of fat and add it to the egg and pecorino mix.

Depending on your taste, you can remove a bit of fat.

You put water boiling and you salt it generously. You boil pasta, and take it out approximately 2 minutes before the official cooking time. You add the pasta in the pan with the guanciale, and you add cooking water into it to continue the cooking while you mix (few water, multiple times, bit by bit). With the pasta still wet, you add it to the container where the egg mix is (not on fire). Better too dry (in which case you add a bit of cooking water) than too liquid (cannot be repaired easily, you will have to drop it in the pan and let it dry). You mix vigorously and you should have the egg sauce perfectly attached to the pasta. If you put enought pecorino in the sauce, you probably won't need additional one on top.

That's it. There are people who do it very differently, for example there are those who mix egg with so much pecorino that they make a solid ball that they add to the pan while finishing the cooking of the pasta and they melt it with cooking water.

Either way, carbonara (and cacio e Pepe) are extremely simple recipes that have a tricky process easy to mess up, and it takes a few attempts to get it as you want it.

I make this by heart, but I'll try.

• beat 4 eggs (I make 4 portions of pasta) with a handful of Pecorino Romano, set aside
• fry guanciale in a pan, remove when crispy, keep the fat
• meanwhile, boil pasta according to package instructions, I usually take them out 30-45 seconds earlier, as they will continue to cook in the pan
• transfer pasta to pan, mix with the guanciale fat, add a little pasta water to deglaze the pan
• add about a cup of pasta water to the egg mixture, slowly, continue to mix until it reaches the liked consistency
• turn the pan heat off, add egg mixture, drown the pasta in sauce. Add more pasta water if needed, the starches will work wonders on the creaminess.

That's it. Plate with the crispy guanciale, some freshly cracked pepper and a hefty amount of pecorino on top.

Try using a bit of pasta cooking water ("tears of the gods") with whatever pasta sauce you're making. In fact it is wise to save a cup/glass of pasta water when you're draining it to adjust the possible dryness of the pasta later, or you'll end up using tons of olive oil which won't work as well.

I'm partial to Chef John's Carbonara. It's been a favorite of mine for a while and his videos help me get the hang of tricky techniques.

Oh, I love me some whipped cream! Not in carbonara though :D (whipped or otherwise).

Sure, but call it alla a la panna if you do so.

The trick is to keep the right¹ volume of noodle-water before mixing pasta and sauce in the noodle pot. The starch in the water gives the sauce the right consistence.

¹tricky