Servings: Serves 4, though there's no shame if you and one other person eat it all by yourselves in one sitting.

1/2 pound of the best bacon you can find, ideally thick-sliced. Avoid uncured bacon. Traditionally the recipe calls for pancetta, but that's harder to find and tastes worse. ½ pound of the best bacon you can find, ideally thick-sliced. Avoid uncured bacon. Traditionally the recipe calls for pancetta, but that's harder to find and tastes worse.
4 good-sized garlic cloves 4 good-sized garlic cloves
3 tablespoons olive oil (doesn't have to be fancy) 3 tablespoons olive oil (doesn't have to be fancy)
1/4 cup dry white wine (old cheap stuff that's been sitting in your fridge since last Thursday is fine; dry vermouth is also an excellent option) ¼ cup dry white wine (old cheap stuff that's been sitting in your fridge since last Thursday is fine; dry vermouth is also an excellent option)
2 good-sized eggs 2 good-sized eggs
An obscene amount of fresh-ground black pepper -- buy a Unicorn! An obscene amount of fresh-ground black pepper -- buy a Unicorn!
2 tablespoons chopped flat-leaf (Italian) parsley 2 tablespoons chopped flat-leaf (Italian) parsley
1 pound spaghetti, not too thin (the best comes from Rainbow Grocery's bulk bins) 1 pound spaghetti, not too thin (the best comes from Rainbow Grocery's bulk bins)
1/4 cup grated Romano cheese (old is fine) ¼ cup grated Romano cheese (old is fine)
1/2 cup Parmigiano-Reggiano ½ cup Parmigiano-Reggiano

Put the water on to boil. Add a big handful of salt. (Salting the water is very important when you’re planning to use an oil-based sauce, because the oil won’t absorb any salt itself; you need to compensate for that in the noodles.) Proceed with the recipe, putting the pasta in the water whenever it starts to boil.
Cut the bacon into strips about ¼ inch wide.
Chop the butt off each garlic clove and smoosh it with the side of a knife -- hard enough that the skin is easy to remove, but not much harder than that. Like, one fault line tops. Put the garlic and oil into a frying pan and cook at medium-high. While you're waiting, measure the wine; you're going to need it soon. Okay, back to the garlic -- take it out when it starts to turn light brown. If in doubt, take it out early; you don't want it to burn. Put the garlic on a piece of tinfoil to cool, and eat it later when nobody's looking.
Okay, now you have a pan of hot garlic-flavored olive oil. Dump the bacon in and cook it until it the edges get crisp. Add the wine and watch it bubble for about one minute, then turn off the heat.
While you were doing all of the above, your significant other should have been doing the following: Break the eggs into a metal bowl. A big bowl -- you're going to toss pasta in it later. Whisk the eggs a little with a fork. Add the parsley, both cheeses, and as much pepper as you can stand to grind (your wrist will get tired; if a child is available, make them take over). Mix it all up.
Hopefully at this point, the bowl of eggy cheese, the bacon, and the pasta are all finishing at around the same time. Drain the pasta, shake the colander so all the water gets out and let it sit for 30 seconds so some of the steam escapes. Then dump it in the bowl with the cheese and start tossing -- tongs help a lot, if you have them. If all went well, you have neither a mess of unmelted cheese nor scrambled eggs in the bottom of the bowl, but instead, each strand of spaghetti is coated with a thin layer of flash-cooked egg-cheese molecules.
Warm up the bacon if it's gotten cold, and dump it on top, along with everything else in its pan. Yes, that includes all the bacon grease.
Toss again and serve.

Parmigiano-Reggiano (This ingredient makes the dish; it's absolutely worth the trouble to buy a whole chunk of it and grate it yourself at the last minute. If that seems like too much work, it's because you're still using a cowbell-shaped cheese grater. Throw it out and buy a wide microplane for twelve bucks on Amazon; you'll never look back... except to say, "Wow I can't believe I wasted the best years of my life grating cheese with a cowbell when I could have been using a microplane all that time!" Alternately, ask the guy at the cheese counter to grate the cheese that day or maybe a day or two earlier.)  Parmigiano-Reggiano (This ingredient makes the dish; it's absolutely worth the trouble to buy a whole chunk of it and grate it yourself at the last minute. If that seems like too much work, it's because you're still using a cowbell-shaped cheese grater. Throw it out and buy a wide microplane for twelve bucks on Amazon; you'll never look back... except to say, "Wow I can't believe I wasted the best years of my life grating cheese with a cowbell when I could have been using a microplane all that time!" Alternately, ask the guy at the cheese counter to grate the cheese that day or maybe a day or two earlier.)
When measuring the cheese, you want to really cram it in there like a hockey puck. Or just do it by weight: 38g of the parm-reg, 25g of the romano  When measuring the cheese, you want to really cram it in there like a hockey puck. Or just do it by weight: 38g of the parm-reg, 25g of the romano