Deconstructed Spaghetti Carbonara

This summer, when I actually had some free time to read, I re-discovered the local library. To get most of the current books I'm interested in reading, I have to wait on the hold list, but last week as I was leaving the library a brand new cookbook beckoned me from its prominent spot on the new book's shelf. How exciting to find a new book with no wait list! I promptly checked it out, brought it home and was amazed by the photos and recipes hidden inside.

Crillon At Home, by Jean-Francois Piege

I have never heard of this book, nor the chef, but the fact that the forwards were written by Alain Ducasse (France's culinary superstar) and Thomas Keller (America's #1), I knew the book would be worth a look.
Jean-Francois Piege's cuisine is very modern, I just love the presentations, its not your standard stacked dish (protein on bottom, and veggie/sauce/garnish stacked above), but rather artistic palettes of colorful foods and sauces.

My inspiration dish: Spaghetti Carbonara/ Breast of Pork, 2006 Version

The recipes inside are not your everyday "throw something together" type of thing. They call for ingredients such as bottle fed Limousin lamb, bourgeoise asparagus grown by Robert Blanc (where the heck would I find that?????), and pigeon trimmings. To make a dish from this book would be a labor of love. So instead of taking off on a day long cooking adventure, I decided to attempt a component of a dish: deconstructed spaghetti carbonara.
Now, deconstructed food is a very popular style of modern cooking. In fact, the Top Chef challenge 2 weeks ago was to deconstruct a traditional dish. A deconstructed dish involved taking the main ingredients of a dish, and cooking them each separately, but when the dish is eaten, it should taste similar to the original dish. Sounds confusing, like why would anyone do that? Here's an example from Top Chef:

Deconstructed Caesar Salad with chicken wing, Parmesan Gel and Brioche

The chef made a Caesar sphere atop Parmesan gelee, and when your fork pierces the Caesar sphere, the dressing oozes out atop the Parmesan gelee and pools around the brioche topped with romaine and chicken. So it tastes like Caesar salad, but doesn't look like one. Each component taken apart is re-made, often times using techniques of molecular gastronomy (like using nitrogen to freeze something not usually frozen, or agar-agar to gelatinize something).
Here is my first attempt at a deconstructed food:

Spaghetti Carbonara-Style
Spaghetti noodles tossed with bacon/Parmesan emulsion, wrapped around Parmesan compression, topped with half-cooked egg yolk rolled in chives.

This was a complete team effort of Scott and I. I am not going to post the recipe, it is kinda involved, but if you really want it, let me know in the comments and I will give it to you. All I can say is it involves making a Parmesan compression, and a bacon/Parmesan emulsion. It also requires patience to lay the noodles side by side, and a trip to the Asian store to buy agar-agar.
Now that the weather is beginning to change, maybe I will spend some weekends deconstructing more meals (hopefully no one will put a hold on my new book and force me to return it!)

Disclaimer to Aunt Janet:
I know the dish sounds outrageously unhealthy (you don't want to know how much cheese was involved in making the compression!), but we only eat a bit of it (in fact, we have a brick of Parmesan compression in our fridge still), and we don't eat like this every night, and I go to spin classes during the week...so that is how I can eat like this and I am thankfully not 300+ lbs!