Bucatini alla Amatriciana
Here’s a mini food lesson: The city of Rome has four pasta “pillars”. Spaghetti Carbonara, Cacio e Pepe, Pasta alla Gricia, and Pasta alla Amatriciana. We’re going to make all four of them this summer, so I decided to start with the Amatriciana. The four pillars are all similar but use a different mix of the same base ingredients to make their sauces. Amatriciana is usually made using bucatini, which is like a fat, hollow spaghetti noodle. Hard to find sometimes, but again, thank you interwebs. The Eataly website is fantastic, you can find just about anything you might need to Italy up your pantry.
Samin Nosrat isn’t specifically known for Italian food, but if you’ve watched Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat on Netflix (which I highly recommend) you know she spent time studying in Italy. Her recipe for Amatriciana uses a pomarola sauce, which is a smooth tomato sauce, so before I made dinner I made a big pot of sauce! I only needed 2 cups for dinner, but had about 8 more cups that I bagged and froze to use later in the summer. Bonus!
This recipe uses guanciale, which is jowl bacon from the cheek of the pig. Again, not the easiest thing to find. If you have a decent butcher store around they should have it. In Indy, Goose the Market always has some. You can use pancetta instead which you can usually find at the grocery, and bacon as a last resort, but it won’t quite be the same. If you do have to use bacon, get the thickest cut you can and go for the best you can find. Oscar Mayer isn’t going to cut it here, sorry. This is a great recipe, not hard at all (most Italian food is pretty simple) and was delicious! Definitely a good start on the Four Pillars!
