I’mma treatcha to Amatriciana

 

We.  Live.  Again. It’s been a while, but we’re back with style!

Things got a little hectic around here what with the holidays.  Also, we took a bit of a food-finding mission to Rome.  Whilst in Rome, we were determined to eat as the Romans do, and boy did we!

One dish we sampled was Pasta Alla Amatriciana.  This is not a dish we had really heard of or experienced before, but apparently it is one of the simple staples of a Roman repast.  When we got back, we knew we had to take a crack at making it!

There are a couple of variants of this dish.  With onions or without.  With spaghetti noodles? rigatoni? or the Roman favorite, the unwieldy bucatini?

The constants however are: tomatoes, pecorino romano, and guanciale.

Now, what, you might ask, is guanciale? 

Guanciale is like bacon, but made from the pig’s cheek instead of its belly and cured in salt instead of smoked.  It brings great flavor to the sauce.  It’s like spaghetti with bacon, but better.  It is also VERY hard to find in Austin, Texas.  Luckily, a local specialty cheese store also has an excellent charcuterie selection.

A dicey proposition!  As you can see, this is some fatty bacon.  The recipe we used (sorry, no link) had a novel solution to efficiently render the fat.

The diced guanciale simmers in 1/2 cup of water until the water evaporates completely.  The water helps evenly distribute the heat and allows a good deal of fat to render prior to browning.

Once the water is gone and only the grease remains, you fry the guanciale until golden and crispy.

Then, to the same pan, add red pepper flake and tomato paste.

Then add red wine, canned tomatoes, and the guanciale and simmer for about 15 minutes.

Another (strange) trick we picked up from the recipe is to take the cheese that we want to incorporate into the pasta and combine it with some of the rendered guanciale fat. This makes it easier to distribute the cheese throughout the hot noodles without it clumping.  It also adds more pork flavor!

Spaghetti, ‘natch.  Bucatini (long noodles with a hollow center) is preferred by the Romans, but it’s not easy to find and it’s a mess to eat.  You get it all wound up on your fork, and on the way to your mouth it unwinds and whips sauce all over your shirt!

Ahhh, buona sera!  A delightful and hearty dish.