A video showing a recipe for a French twist on the Italian pasta dish Carbonara has just gone viral, drawing the ire of Facebook users throughout Italy.
The recipe, shared by French website Demotivateur on its YouTube channel last month, carries no resemblance to the dish whose name it bears, according to the Italian Internet community.
In fact, many Italians on social media have found the distortion of this Roman dish extremely offensive. The main cause of dispute (or disgust) is the boiled pancetta mixed with the farfalle pasta in the French adaptation of the recipe.
Italian food company Barilla, whose pasta is featured in the video, jokingly denounced the recipe in the comments section of Facebook page Sai cosa mangi (You Know What You Eat?) soon after it went online, arguing that the change was a bit "too much."
Mon dieu! We're open to all kinds of variations on the legendary Carbonara, but this is too much…sorry!
Try and drown out the image of boiled pancetta with this approved recipe from our chefs:
And if you'd like something different, our friends at GialloZafferano have a Carbonara to suit every taste:
Italians are up arms over this "sacrilege." There has been a deluge of outraged comments on Facebook: "Terrible!" one simply states. Italian news site Giornalettismo succinctly captured the outrage: "The video of the horrible French carbonara that's disgusting the whole of Italy."
“Five minutes of silence for the death of Carbonara in France,” was posted along with the offending video on the Facebook community page Sai cosa mangi?, which has since seen over 10,000 shares of the video.
"This is the first time I've seen Carbonara cooked like this, and I've had the homemade version quite a few times! It's true that sometimes there's cream in the pasta, but let's not get crazy," another Facebook comment decries.
People seem to be in true mourning. "Here we have an example of the death of Carbonara! How to completely bungle the preparation," another person comments.
Amidst all the outrage, many Italians have been actively sharing recipes for the proper preparation of this classic Roman dish, and sparking a new round of debates in the process. For example, is it better to use pancetta or guanciale? Parmesan or pecorino? And when should the egg enter the equation?
Despite these various smaller debates, there is one thing Italians can agree on: "French Carbonara" bears no resemblance to the original.
A version of this post first appeared on HuffPost Italy. It has been translated into English and edited for clarity.
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