Too bad Marcella is no longer here to comment. I’m guessing that, given the impossibility of finding guanciale at the time, she used some butter for added richness/roundness, and a little onion for added sweetness, to more closely approximate the dish. But if you want to talk about a dish that bears little resemblance in the US to what you get in Italy, focus on bolognese.
10
Superb article. Thank you Mr. Hall. Just a delightful "exploration" of the marvels of Italian cuisine and the stunning Italian landscape. Variety is the spice of life.
9
Reading through these posts make me hungry. I had forgotten about the salt pork my family used when cooking certain dishes. The flavor can't be duplicated. Everyone needs to go to Italy at least once. Right now I would settle for a great big frothy cappuccino with a big fat black and white cookie. I love food.
3
I'm weeping as I read. I too am a fan. No onions please !
3
All that info and no recipes? I have also been cooking/studying this dish since the earthquake. Very disappointing, no recipe. Please, how could you get one to me? I am Italian/American; I need good pasta! Thanks.
20
in the article, Hall quotes ristorante roma's maria bucci's ingredients as guanciale, tomato sauce & pecorino. i would have liked to see the entire recipe, or at the very least, specifically her recipe for her tomato sauce. hopefully, Hall will read & follow-up. if anyone else cares to "chime" in, please do.
also from this article segment, hard to tell whether her rendition was "pasta alla gricia" or "pasta all'amatriciana"???
9
All due respect to Mr. Hall on a savory piece-- /complimenti, davvero/-- but he's badly wrong about one detail. True guanciale is easy enough to find, these days in the US. La Quercia Meats of Norwalk, Iowa, supplies exquisite artisanal pork products, including the tangy meat of the jowl, all from pigs humanely farmed. La Quercia turns up all across the country; I've enjoyed its meats in Manhattan's Del Posto, for instance. Better yet, any good store in Des Moines, Cedar Rapids, or elsewhere in Iowa can cut you a hunk of guanciale for the night's meal: alla gricia, all'amatriciana, or in any variant you prefer.
5
I really like Italian food, but for cultural-religious (Jewish)-ethical reasons I don´t eat pork and try to avoid meat cooked in a sauce with dairy ingredients (Exodus 23:19, Exodus 34:26, and Deuteronomy 14:21). On the other hand, this dish sounds so delicious. Anybody have a suggestion using lamb and without the cheese in the sauce?!? (Clearly an absurd idea!)
6
Accademia Italiana Della Cucina or the Italian Academy of Cuisine published La Cucina The regional Cooking of Italy in 2009. 2000 authentic recipes with the minimalist approach. Check page 221 for the bucatini all' amatriciana. No olive oil, no butter, no garlic, no onion. Keep it classic, keep it simple. This has all the goodness of health and taste built into it. Love it the way it is.
10
Delightful. Thank you.
2
I think a ‘meet up’ of “all’amatriciana” fans should be organized in NYC.
12
Americans have about the same lack of education , the same lack of knowledge and the same lack of taste when they talk about food as when they talk about politics.
5
Did I miss something? One recipe link, with a recipe in Italian?
2
@Chris Pando if you scroll down the recipe link it is also in English.
3
No recipe???
5
Another ridiculous argument about the so-called "purity" of one method of cooking over another. Cook and eat what you like.
12
Guanciale can't be brought into the U.S. from Italy. There's an easy solution. A chunk of guanciale, made of pig cheek jowls, is fun to have on hand, but it's not vital because guanciale is just extremely fatty bacon.
Some local U.S. pig farmers cure their own guanciale, and there's a national brand. Guanciale tastes and works exactly the same as salt pork, which is sold everywhere in the U.S.
Salt pork or guanciale are both a slab of pig fat with minimal streaks of bacony meat. Simply slice the salt pork into pieces. Saute exactly as you would guanciale into crispy bits swimming in a pool of hot melted fat. That’s your “sauce” component. In France, these pork pieces are called “lardon.” Spaghetti Carbonara also uses guanciale, salt pork, or pancetta.
Amatriciana is 3 ingredients for the white version: spaghetti, some kind of bacon (guanciale, salt pork, or pancetta), and grated Romano cheese (Pecorino or Locatelli; same thing). The red version adds tomatoes (plum are best, canned or fresh). No butter, no garlic, no onion. I’ve never used olive oil. The crispy pork creates its own oil.
Cook and drain the pasta. Stir together 4 to 5 ounces of oily hot pork bits, 5 to 6 ounces of Romano, and the spaghetti (16/17 ounces depending on the package size) quickly and well.
Have cheese on the side for those who want more. A heaping teaspoon of sea salt goes in my pasta water. I only use sea salt. I never use more than a teaspoon. Over-salting pasta water is an American thing.
7
@Jason Bennett
Re your first sentence: "Guanciale can't be brought into the U.S. from Italy." My experience in May suggests including an adverb:: "Guanciale can't be legally brought into the U.S. from Italy." Enough said.
5
@Jason Bennett
It is often claimed that American cured meats are not as good as Italian-made ones, but respectable, tasty, and more-or-less traditionally-flavored guanciale can be purchased online from La Quercia, 'Nduja Artisans, and OLLI Salumeria; and these products are available in many retails shops, nowadays. NYC retailers producing and selling their own excellent guanciale (and other salumi) include Biellese and Il buco Alimentari e Vineria. Then, there are many small shops curing guanciale under the radar, if you’re willing …
What's there to lose?
3
Did anyone try making this dish with cured hog jowl? Same part of the animal and an excellent seasoning meat in many other dishes. I live in the south and it is widely available here but I believe it would not be impossible to find elsewhere.
2
@Marian V.
May be wrong, but I think most US cured hog jowl is smoked. It's great for many dishes. But, guanciale is not smoked.
As with other comments, there are a number of US producers of guanciale, available online, and if you're lucky, at an Italian specialties store near you. I'm lucky that way.
2
@Marian V. I have made it with guanciale. I prefer pancetta. I bought the guanciale in an Italian market in Minneapolis.
2
Re my earlier comment, now pending approval, on the bucatini-sauce flip-pants issue, some smartypants will respond with: "that's what a lap napkin is for." I've come to think 21st-century sauce flips have acquired smart technology. The flip can now locate a pants surface not covered by napkin.
5
"...to find out I've been doing it wrong."
Which means, obviously, that Hazan was doing it "wrong." Why on earth does it have to be black or white, right or wrong. Different people do it different ways. You enjoy one way more than another. Isn't that really what any dish is all about? The notion that someone's particular way of doing it can be called "wrong" is just foolish.
4
@Gypsy Boy
Here's the thing: the recipe is called "pasta all'amatriciana" and it comes from the town of Amatrice which has published the recipe on its website. It is a set recipe just like "la carbonara". Sure, you can add olive oil, butter, garlic, onions or whatever leftover is languishing in your fridge, but then it will not be "pasta all'amatriciana.
9
@Gypsy Boy I think what he is suggesting is that Hazan created her own version. I for one like to find the traditional versions, rather than the new-chef style ones.
1
@anne i have read that different people in Amatrice make it differently, hence the yearly contest. That is certainly plausible, like how many ways can you cook a hamburger sort of thing.
1
Good luck in finding Italian "guanciale". It is banned by the FDA & is no longer imported.
1
Don’t trash Marcella!
8
Another great source for guanciale is the Smoking Goose, based in Indianapolis.
2
I prefer to use bacon instead of guanciale, I also substitute the San Marzano with heinz ketchup. Finish with a splash of Tabasco sauce, and a sprinkle of kraft Parmesan! Bon appetit!
8
@
Seriously, you're totally kidding, right?
10
@Ben Brice -- I bet that in a blind tasting you wouldn't even know the difference! I'm jus sayin....
2
Heinz ketchup?! Really? No pasta all’amatriciana for you.
4
I like making Gricia with rigatoni--some of the thin slices of Gricia hide demurely inside the tubes and provide a nice little surprise. That's how I ate it at Flavio's in Testaccio a month ago.
9
I feel confused now about lamb and pork. Those shepherds with no ingredients but lamb cook with pork?
3
@designprose
In Italy, traditionally a pig was slaughtered once a year, all the parts were used, most of them cured so as to not go bad. The shepherds would travel with some guanciale. Pecorino is made from sheep milk. Sheep are kept for the milk to make cheese and for their wool. Only some lambs would be slaughtered in the Spring. I've lived in Italy for 41 years and I have never seen mutton, just the traditional lamb come Spring and Summer
7
A bout butter. Much has been made of the "first" American Italian cookbook, The Talisman, sometimes called the Italian Joy of Cooking. This book, written in 1950, was translated into English and promoted by Ronzoni. Note: "For the American edition of The Talisman, all weights, measurements, instructions, and ingredients have been adapted to American usage." This includes the substitution of butter for olive oil, an oil not commonly found in American kitchens. I don't think the recipes in the translated Talisman mention olive oil at all, only butter. I suspect this book may have had a long lasting influence on Italian-American recipes including Hazen's famous buttered tomato sauce.
Growing up, I loved my mother's "New England" version of spaghetti sauce made with tomatoes, butter and thyme.
2
I love it when Italians tell you are doing it wrong—by adding too many ingredients, messing with the original recipe, or piling on the butter and cheese. The original peasant food is healthful with pure flavors. Meat and fat were used sparingly. In fact, we spoil our taste buds by complicating everything.
When all the pasta was homemade, it took a lot of labor. It wasn’t for every meal. The Italians of traditional cuisine also ate a lot of lentils and farro, vegetables in season, and soups with wonderful stocks. Let’s remember the deliciousness and also the healthy life.
10
You inspired me to do a side by side taste test of both recipes linked in the article. Hands down - the "official" recipe was the favorite over the "alternative" take - which is quite like Marcella Hazan's and adds onion and garlic. Admittedly, I substituted pancetta because I couldn't find guanciale. Still good. Used chili flakes and did not take them out. Thank you for taking us on an Italian food journey - a wonderful exploration of food, place and culture.
5
Thank you for this utterly delightful article. I adore my fairly accurate version of this dish with bucatini--I love the chewiness of it. And now I'm aching for Italy....
9
I agree with no garlic, but starting with a little saute of onion with a splash of white wine, works for me.
On the bucatini/shirt stain issue, my experience is not shirt, but pants. If a bucatino (?) flips sauce to shirt, the diner might notice quickly, or someone else at the table will. When the sauce flip hits diner pants, diner might not realize the flip, nor would anyone else tableside. Then, after your evening stroll, a drink, a gelato, others walking toward you see the stain (mentally noting: "Oh, the poor old man"), and you're back in your room, with a pants stain that will never come out.
3
I always use rosemary in my all amatriciana. It’s delicious. Blasphemous huh?
4
The recipe ingredients include “a pinch of hot chilli pepper” and later requires that just before you you add back the cooked guanciale to “Remove the chilli pepper”. What with? Tweezers?
7
In the original Italian, the recipe calls for a small piece of hot Pepper. Translation is off.
5
@robbo999
Italian chefs, at least among my family, don't buy dried flakes in a jar. You grow (or at least buy fresh) and dry your own hot peppers, thread them on a string in the kitchen, and when needed you split them with a knife and toss the halves in the pan, taking them out before serving.
10
@robbo999 ...and a microscope.
1
125 g di guanciale di Amatrice, has been thoughtfully auto translated at the Commune di Amatrice website as "125 g of amateur pillow". As a professional chef and an amateur linguist, I find this delightful. And so: "buon appetito e buona notte".
30
Clearly, you have the best job on the planet
29
“I’ve never understood why they make it with bucatini,” he said. “It’s such a big noodle, and it splashes all over, so that when you eat it, you always end up with tomato sauce on your shirt.”
Totally agree, I never use bucatini anymore for this reason.
5
@Nicole
I would vote you down if I could. Must have bucatini. I'm not buying his spaghetti angle. I suspect the last pasta maker who could actually produce that difficult noodle left after the quake.
4
@Bill Totally agree about the value of bucatini. I had vongole alla bucatini in the Amalfi Coast and will never go back to spaghetti, the open tube captures so much more of the flavor of whatever sauce you put on it. Clean shirt be damned!
7
I love this dish. I use Lidia’s recipe which includes onions. I live in Brooklyn and finding excellent Guanciale is usually not a problem. For those of you that are having difficulty sourcing this essential ingredient, I suggest you try to order Guanciale from La Quercia. Excellent quality and produced here in the United States in Iowa!
8
@themodprofessor thank you for the recommendation of La Quercia!
I almost lost my appetite when I read the word "umami". It's a horrible word to use when describing any European food and in fact should disappear from use. Other than that I enjoyed the article.
10
@Baboulas Its a word used to describe taste which the author thought fit. Seems very appropriate though hardly used is true. but an expanded vocabulary is always good. Other words sound so awful they should be dropped.
3
@Baboulas Thank you so much for the recommendation of La Quercia! I have such a hard time finding guanciale when I am home in Oregon USA.
2
@Baboulas Why type out "intensely savory" or "pleasantly savory" or any other long description when "umami" will do just fine? Tomatoes are an example of an umami-rich food. So is cheese. The fact that umami is a Japanese word has no bearing on how it can or should be applied. I can think of no language that doesn't make use of loan words. The only thing that should disappear here is your apparent bias.
7
Now, how about the story for pasta carbonara and the charcoal makers (ergo: carbonara).
OK. You don't have to force me. I'll tell the story: The charcoal makers go out in country; they cut wood; they dig a hole in the ground; they throw the wood in the hole; then they set the wood on fire and let it get going really good; then they bury the roaring inferno and cut off the oxygen to blaze. Result: charcoal.
But, all this cutting, and digging, and burning gives one an appetite. Not to worry. The charcoal makers have - with great forethought - brought some pasta, a pot, salt pork, Pecorino cheese, and some black pepper which is usually forbidden in Italian cuisine. (Only white...)
Then they beg and egg from a farmer. Boil the pasta, cook the salt pork until crispy - mix - and then at the last minute stir in the beaten egg and try not to scramble it. And, throwing caution and culture to the winds, season with cracked black pepper. Which looks like they got charcoal it it. End of story...
22
@Nezahualcoyotl correct, but only the yolk of the egg.
3
@Nezahualcoyotl -- Great! Saludos desde Tepoztlán, Morelos!
2
All I can say is lucky you! I enjoyed the experience on your coattails. Thanks.
1
There will never be a definitive version of pasta all'amatriciana, though Marcella Hazan's version speaks more of her traditions of Romagna than those of northern Lazio. Guanciale (cheek) is the pork of choice, not pancetta (though, I confess, the my Authentic Pasta Book from the mid 1980s, I included pancetta because guanciale was hard to find in the USA at the time). I must differ, though, on describing La Gricia as white Amatriciana. I published in this newspaper some 30 years ago what was likely the first article and recipe about La Gricia. At the time, it was almost unknown even in Rome apart from the Trattoria da Lucia in Trastevere. Signora Lucia brought it to Rome in 1936 from the Gricia valley and named it for the place. It was a favorite of the film director Vittorio De Sica. I first discovered it in 1973 at da Lucia and have enjoyed it ever since and make it at home. When my article appeared in the Times, it boomeranged back to Rome and other restaurants began to serve it. But La Gricia was, until about 20 years ago, little known. Does it pre-date Columbus and the arrival of the tomato in Europe? Possibly, but we must remember that tomatoes were thought to be poisonous and did not gain currency in Italian cooking (first in and around Naples) in the late 18th century. The tomato achieved greater glory when it was added to pizza, in Naples, around 1805.
16
@Fred Plotkin Fred, thank you for this wonderful response. As usual, with everything you do in food and opera, you write with such insight and curiosity, backed by facts. Great to get the general timeline for the introduction of the tomato to Italian cuisine. Perhaps you can do a more in depth article just on that subject for the NY Times? I would read it in an instant!
4
First and foremost, if you yearn to eat pasta all'amatriciana, get a passport, save up your pennies and come to Italy (where I live). No matter how good your recipe is, few of the raw materials are available in the States from the salt to the flour to the meats and cheeses. Second, as a culture raised on chicken nuggets, tater tots, tasteless pork, coke and lousy pizza, few of you would know "the real thing" if you ate it.
8
@mrfreeze6
So true! Seattle/Italy here also.
4
@mrfreeze6- Or come to New York City where between Little Italy, Brooklyn and the Bronx you have been able to get any ingredient you want for 100 years. My Roman friend Livio who for the time being lives here with his family makes Amatriciana perfectly. Oh and let's not forget the great Italian neighborhoods of Boston and Providence.
5
@Jeanne DePasquale Perez, I stand, partially, corrected. In a few specific parts of the country you might find some of the "authentic" ingredients (not inexpensive to be sure). My main point is, most Americans wouldn't know good food if it hit them in the mouth. I live Italy and many of the Americans I encounter here complain that "you can't find a decent pizza in this country." That pretty much says it all.
9
We just bought a house in nearby Abruzzo, and last year drove the Via Salaria route from Rome thru Lazio up and around to Abruzzo. The earthquake damage in all the towns is visible from the highway and horrific. What one has to remember in Italy is that while there is a classic "correct" method to any dish, there are countless variations, just like the accents and dialects change from hill town to hill town. And the Italians love to argue about whose is best, down to the tiniest change of ingredient. And butter in the Abruzzo/Lazio area? No way...one of our neighbors is Abruzzese married to a northern Italian. She loves to use butter, he scrunches up his nose in disgust. The butter aisle here is tiny, the olive oil selection immense. No matter, olive oil here is almost like butter, rich, low in acid, and plentiful in all sauces. Regarding the pink/orange hue...it does come from an emulsion of cheese, and almost every tomato based sauce I've had in this area has that dairy richness and orange tint. Don't underestimate the importance of the final mantecare or saute in the pan of the pasta and sauce to create that emulsion. Even the 3 day back of burner sauce is finished in the pan with more oil and cheese and pasta water. There should never be any loose liquid on the plate, and pasta is not drowned in sauce. It's not an exaggeration to say the pasta dishes in the US are generally completely different than what you get in Italy.
9
I lived in Rome 73-77 and La Pentola was one of my favorite restaurants. They also served a great pasta panna, pancetta e piselli.
1
A few points about this very nice article.
- Marcella was and is a goddess, but she did use a great deal of butter without regard to local tradition. Pasta all'amatriciana should not contain butter. Or parmigiano.
- Or garlic. The fuss over Cracco's Milanese version was good PR for everybody but also entirely justified. If you have to change the canonical ingredients, change the name too. It may taste great, but it's not what people have a right to expect. Suppose you're allergic to garlic and you order amatriciana because you KNOW it doesn't contain it?
- As somebody above said, the worst amatriciana I ever made was with US-made guanciale. It doesn't have enough fat and sometimes it has herbs. Better to use good pancetta than inferior guanciale. And pancetta is not necessarily wrong. In fact, guanciale got its start as a poor substitute for the costlier pancetta.
- I first saw amatriciana made in 1986 or thereabouts at Ristorante Roma in Amatrice. I was amazed at the simplicity, and that spaghetti was preferred. Bucatini were preferred in Rome, said the signora with disdain. But there is a nexus between Amatrice, and Apennine shepherds in general, since an important sheep market used to be held in front of the Pantheon. This tradition eventually gave rise to numerous trattorias in the area that brought the Apennine traditions to Rome.
- For my Rome amatriciana, however, I would go to Checchino dal 1887 for Elio Mariani's version.
21
I haven’t eaten meat for about twenty years, and pork (factory farmed) was the meat that inspired that diet choice. But I remember the taste and mouthfeel of this luscious pasta dish. This and spaghetti carbonara are the only meat dishes that make me nostalgic. I’m not going back, though. I’ll have to approximate it with mushrooms.
9
Regina Schrambling NYT recipe from 1989
https://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/9811-bucatini-allamatriciana?utm_source=sharetools&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=website
8
I was so intrigued by this article that I said "Oh Fie!" to authenticity and made a fast and loose version with canned Jersey Fresh tomatoes, Parmesan cheese, and smoked pork skirt steak. Although my effort was an imitation of the true Pasta All'Amatriciana, it was quite good. In my experience, the success of this dish (apart from using the proper ingredients) is for the pasta to be hot and slightly wet. If the pasta sits in the colander and becomes sticky, it is difficult to evenly distribute the cheese and when the sauce is stirred in, the dish is a tad dry. Hence, I offer a few technical suggestions: 1) Time the preparation such that the pasta and sauce are finished at the same time, 2) Drain the pasta and while it is still wet, put it back in the hot pasta pot. Add the cheese, let it melt/soften for ~ 1 minute, pour over the sauce, stir through, and serve immediately. Buon appetito!
8
If anyone says your Italian dish is wrong, just say, "That's how they do it in XYZ village." Pick a non-touristic village few people might have gone to. Or, throw your ingredients into Google and you might well find that some village does make that exact recipe, though you'd now have to call the dish a different name.
28
Bravissimo! What a great story. I make amatriciana just about once a week and I do it knowingly wrong and love it. Yes, garlic. Yes, red pepper flakes. Yes, basil. And I'm afraid Parmigiana. The wife's ancestors are from Parma and that's required.
13
@Mark R.
Oh dear, it is parmigiano...with an O....Parmigiana would be a baked dish with eggplant or zucchini even….
4
With all due respect, Marcella Hazan never made a single mistake in her cooking life. I imagine I would have happily eaten the things she threw away as failures.
That said, you'll never make this dish right unless you cure your own wild boar shot with a single barrel shotgun with an ancient yew stock.
45
Just give us the recipe(s)!
56
@J L S Alexandria VA
They want you to go to Amatrice for that.
Coordinates: 42°37′37″N 13°17′41″E
9
@J L S No. You have to pay extra for "NYTimes Cooking."
Just look at the pictures: you can figure it out.
9
You wrote, "I had to travel all the way to Amatrice to find out I’ve been doing it wrong for 40 years," when what you should have learned is that for Italian food the word "wrong" means simply "not the way I (or my mother) make it."
83
@Dennis Not true. There are precise principles in cooking and they have reasons to be there .
5
And, of course,!the Romans would say their recipe is the true and correct way. And frankly, given the long history of the dish in Rome, I believe they can make such a claim. Since their method includes butter and onions, and given that cured pig mouth is not found in America, it may be that but for the inclusion of Parmesan, the author IS doing it the most right way possible!
4
@John I doubt Italians ever put butter in pasta .
As butter in Italy, except in the north was very rare and expensive. No cows. How do you have butter without cows ?
5
This article is a real trifecta---a personal history, an area history, and an inviting food history. Thanks!
28
Not sure why a world-traveled foodie would look to Marcella Hazan for an authentic Amatriciana recipe. Hazan was from Emilia-Romagna, and she moved to NYC soon after marrying her husband Victor. She claimed she did not learn how to cook until she moved to NYC. She and her husband spent most of their time between NYC and Florida. How authentically Italian can one expect her cooking to be?
15
@MistyBreeze
That’s not really fair. Julia Child wasn’t even French, and Lidia left her homeland, Istria, at a very young age to America. Would anyone ask why anyone would read James Joyce to understand Ireland because he famously left when he was just a young man?
39
@MistyBreeze, Hazan did her research. She also had an excellent sense for flavor and texture that was absolutely correct for traditional Italian cooking, even if some of her ingredients (like the butter mentioned here) might be scoffed at. I lived in Italy decades ago, and I have cooked from a large collection of cookbook authors over the years. Hazan was the best among all of them.
12
@Patrick Julia Child just introduced Americans to French cooking but for France she had no value as a chef .
4
We are often in Rome and my husband adores the Amatriciana at Cantina e Cucina
6
I go with the onion. Many Americans add a small chiffonade of basil. Flo Fab said that was okay on these pages.
If Americans had access to true Italian produce tomatoes and pork products, I'd go austere also. guancial? Most of us have a difficult time finding decent pancetta.
However, Italian cooking is all about the best, fresh, high quality ingredients. And most Americans do not have access to them.
I always liked onion in pasta all’amatriciana because it was a nuance in change from garlic.
10
@Wordsworth from Wadsworth I remember here in the NYT an article about potatoes in duck fat, with onions !.
Yuck ! You put garlic in potatoes with duck fat. No onions !
It has a sense coming from the region in France where you make a recipe. And a reason of taste .Americans have no idea about that. They have no references, so they mix everything .
Where’s the recipe!?
9
@Tom this looks wonderful! Thank you for sharing the recipe.
1
"But people in town privately fear that it will be another 20 years before things return to normal, if ever. Filippo Palombini, who was Amatrice's mayor at the time of my visit, told me that reconstruction to date had been slowed by 'mistaken' government policies."
That's interesting. Last year I spent considerable time in Molise, Abruzzo, and Campania. The one thing the average person kept saying was that the government doesn't care about anything except party politics. The roads crumble, the garbage piles up, services deteriorate, people leave, and all the politicos do is scream about immigrants.
Actually, sounds kinda familiar.
30
Wonderful story.
Concise and to the point...no onions or butter!
And, just like the much maligned ‘Bolognese’, definitely NO garlic!
Great travelogue too of a beautiful part of Italy.
The only thing I didn’t like about the article...now I’m hungry.
22
The article gives this link: https://www.comune.amatrice.rieti.it/gli-spaghetti-allamatriciana/. It's in Italian, but the recipe is repeated in English at the end. This recipe is the real deal. My wife and family are Romans, and this Amatriciana is the one that they make without any doubt. I "discovered" Amatriciana at the age of 40, very shortly after meeting my wife to be. It has been my favorite ever since:-) In America, don't even bother with fresh tomatoes. You want a can of the genuine San Marzano DOC tomatoes to get the right flavor. Likewise, a good genuinely smokey American bacon will come closer to the true flavor than the "guanciale" that you can find here (even if shopping at a posh market like Wegman's).
21
Thank you for this! I’m growing my own San Marzano tomatoes and they’re almost ready! I’ll try this tonight with canned San Marzanos and in another week or so with fresh! As for the Guanciale, I bring it home from Podesto’s Market in Stockton (which is about three hours away)! And when I don’t have any guanciale, I substitute a passable pancetta from Whole Foods. Buon apetito!!
8
@Nancy O’Connekll, if you're using fresh tomatoes then they should always be boiled first for a few minutes and peeled in order to make a better sauce.
@Nancy O’Connekll
I appreciate that you are growing San Marzano tomatoes. However authentic San Marzano tomatoes are grown only in a certain specified area with a certain volcanic soil. And the way they are grown is certified, too.
3
No, sorry, Hazan can not be and is never wrong. It must be the Amatriciani’ who are making mistakes. Them’s the rules.
No recipe? C’mon, I’m hungry just reading this, and now the one recipe I have is apparently bonkers. Please please?
6
Dov'è la ricetta?
21
@Steve An article about a winter dish in the middle of summer. But Americans have no idea about that either. Yesterday in NY a restaurant was service French onion soup. By 94 degrees ! No problem.
1
So, how come no one in the US makes guanciale?
1
@Deborah Hi Deborah, there are actually three sources of excellent American guanciale that I can think of off the top of my head. Nueske's, La Quercia and my favorite from this website http://www.allepiasalumi.com. If you're in Rome and want to smuggle some back, my fave there is from the famous pork butcher Viola on Campo Dei Fiori. Buy a whole one for about $60, they'll double vacuum seal it and I've walked it past more than one beagle in the customs hall.
11
@Deborah -
La Quercia does: http://laquercia.us/cuts_specialties_guanciale_and_lardo_guanciale_americano
As does Nduja Artisans: https://www.ndujaartisans.com/store/p12/Guanciale.html
2
Fairway carries it. But I guess that’s not a national grocery store.
2
Page 157 in Marcella Hazon's Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking.
5
This is a clear example of how the First World is so addicted to its vices. In its over indulgences...that someone would travel thousands of miles to eat pasta.
I get it, I love eating well made, local foods. I really get it. But this constant bombardment - in places like the NYT - with food adoration, the latest "new black" of some niche food dishes, or ingredients...is getting really...perverted.
Its a sign of something truly wrong with us, that we obsess over food, and the pursuit of it like its a heightened, or an enlightened state of being.
I love a good meal. I enjoy well prepared, flavorful foods, but to indulge in food in the way we seem to be doing, making it a pursuit elevated way over a nutritional need...is not showing us in a very good light.
Its not a good look, when so many around us are going hungry day after day. When far too many children are undernourished, and during this hard-weather summer, and away from their school food programs (which are being attacked by this Admin!) are really suffering. Who will go back to school, not rested and ready for a new school year, but starving, and starting their classes at a great disadvantage created by their undernourished young bodies.
I think the NYT, and other media outlets, needs to dial back on the Food porn. Maybe place a front-page story about how the WH is undermining food programs for the disadvantaged, and even seniors, and the working poor, who are struggling to keep themselves properly fed.
47
Hear, hear, @Boregard, One of my other favorite manifestations of the end-times is the adulation of "street food" among the foodies. Did you know that Marie Antoinette had built, just beyond the Trianon, a make believe rural 'hamlet' where she could milk goats into china buckets made for her by Sevres?
2
@Boregard - Well, the author of this piece didn't travel thousands of miles to eat pasta. Apparently he lives in Rome so his travel time was only the two hours he mentions in the article.
6
@Boregard I don't think this article is about food as much as is about travel. Stephen Hall's recipe, no matter how much we try, will never taste the same as it would taste in Italy. I think the underlying message here is, book a ticket, visit the long-forgotten provincial towns in Europe and enjoy their traditions and support the local economy.
5
The historian mentioned in the article, Oretta Zanini De Vita, and Co-author Maureen B. Fant have written a marvelous cookbook—Sauces and Shapes: Pasta The Italian Way.
7
@Chris Newell
Thank you! Here is the "Sauces & Shapes" recipe for pasta all'amatriciana:
For the condimento:
2.5 ounces guanciale
3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
1 small onion (any kind), chopped (optional)*
1 pound (450 g) red, ripe sauce tomatoes, broken into pieces, or canned Italian peeled tomatoes, drained
1 small piece dried chile
salt
To make the dish:
1 pound spaghetti, bucatini, rigatoni, casarecce, or strozzapreti (flour-and-water shapes)
Put the guanciale and oil in a saucepan. Turn the heat to medium and heat gently so the guanciale renders some fat and starts to brown. Taste a piece to assess how salty it is. Then, when it just begins to become crisp, and the onion (if using) and sauté gently until transparent. Add the tomatoes and chile, then taste for salt.
Finish cooking the sauce, covered, over low heat. you'll know it's done when the liquid has thickened somewhat and the fat shows on the surface, about 20 min.
[... cook the pasta ...] Drain the pasta and put it in a warmed serving bowl. Toss it first with the grated cheese, then with the sauce.
* About that onion: Our headnote says, "Many people consider onion a deviation from the sacred original, but hardly anyone thinks it doesn't taste good." So we made it optional. Chef Agata Parisella taught me to add a single layer of onion to the sauce and then remove it. It would add flavor and purists would be none the wiser.
3
@Maureen Fant: we don't have Italian guanciale in the USA. It has been banned by the USDA.
We ate a lot of perciatelli growing up. My father called them splashers. Keep tasting!
4
"I ain't got time for this now."
4
@Kerry Leimer
!!!!!!!!
Why wasn't a recipe for pasta all’amatriciana included in this article?
It would be nice to go to Italy and get the original but I can't do that.
How about it? A recipe please.
93
@Pataman
there were two links to recipes, and the article mentions page 105 of Marcella Hazen's Italian cookbook.
7
@Pataman
There are two links to recipes.
4
@Pataman It is - there is a link to the "official" recipe in the article.
https://www.comune.amatrice.rieti.it/gli-spaghetti-allamatriciana/
6
I know where you can get guanciale! I live in the middle of nowhere in central New York, and a local farmer in Norwich gross heirloom Berkshire pigs and makes the best guanciale from them. Look up Witty Bantam Farm in Norwich N.Y. and convince Faith (that’s the farmer - she’s lovely) to ship you some. Get some of her andouille sausage while you’re at it.
19
I just love these kind of articles about some dish that no one in Italy, or France, or China, or the North Pole agrees how to make, and anyway we can't do it in America because we can't get the right ingredients, especially some stinky cheese, so why bother? And why worry?
13
@Bruce Cronin Italians argue about ingredients like Americans do over sports. Cooking is part of Italian's cultural heritage. You should see the Twitter arguments on some of the Italian cooking feeds.
and, you live in Portland, where you can find a treasure trove of all kinds of ingredients. including the stinky cheese (which many of us love- the stinkier the better. Akin to an IPA hophead and IBU).
10
Wish you would have submitted a version of your favorite recipe of this dish so your readers could give it a try.
13
@SC Durham forget it. The importation of the main and essential ingredient Italian guanciale has been banned by the USDA several years now.
@Michael Sorensen Nonesnse. Plenty of domestic US producers of guanciale - it's not a specific breed of pork, it's a technique for curing it
Thank you for this wonderful article. We split our time between NY and Umbria and used to make the annual pilgrimage to Amatrice. We were here when the earthquake struck, and have not returned sense, believing it was totally off limits. We will go back and return to Ristorante Roma, which was always our restaurant of choice in Amatrice. Happy to support the town. I also encourage people to visit Norcia, the epicenter of the earthquake in the fall if 2016. also located in the beautiful area known as the Valnerina, ordering the Sibillini, it was known as the capital of all things pork, gastronomically - and also needs the support of food lovers and others as they try to rebuild their town and livelihood.
20
Tourists in Italy (and writers) tend to glom on to a few famous dishes but really the magic of Italian food is that it is a thousand different cuisines based on locally grown ingredients that the cooks in that particular town understand and have experience with.
The food of the southern Adriatic, the Po Valley, Tuscany and the Aosta Valley at the foot of the Alps could hardly be more different. Great ingredients, minimalist cooking and a reverence for good technique are the one thing all of Italy seems to have in common.
26
@Tom B. Agree, it's nonsense to talk about "Italian food", as if it's some sort of universal cuisine. Region matters. I would also say the standout element of any Italian regional cuisine is the quality of the ingredients - this article is a testament to that principle, for example that guanciale in the dish really matters, and other substitutes will give you something good but not the actual dish experience.
2
Loved it at a cheap restaurant in Florence (Pane and Vino) - spicy tomato -- knew nothing about the pork, followed by tacino turkey wonderfully prepared in loads of olive oil.
Nest time tell us about alle vongole! (playing with the clam shells -- heaven!)
7
Watch Italia Squisita on YouTube. They regularly have panels of prominent Italian Chefs critique Italian dish videos from TV or Youtube. Hilarious, and exactly the reactions you got in describing variations. Seen as intentional and absolute felonies. But also a great way to improve your authenticity and technique in listening to their comments. Fun article.
14
This is an absolutely wonderful article. I admire Mr. Hall’s dedication to researching the subject matter, and I am thrilled that the purity and history of a recipe both take center stage. I am a great believer in absolutely adhering to the correct ingredients for classic dishes. That’s what makes them classic. I hope the author wins some awards for this story.
12
I love this article! I can almost visualise the facial expressions of the chefs / cooks at the mention of butter - classic.
But that’s what makes Italians so amazing in their inter-personal interactions.
I travelled through Italy, many years ago for my job, and I can recall just about every single meal I ever had!
The small trattoria in Bassano del Grappa where we had a simple meal of zucchini flowers with pasta in a light cream sauce; or that amazing plum tomato, outside of Naples (Caserta)? that had been skinned, seeded and sautéed in a caramel and served over ice cream.
Thank you for allowing me to recall those memories.
17
Enjoyable to read but, why all the fuss? This is a fairly simple and rewarding dish, one of the great pasta dishes Mark Bittman touted as containing ingredients one should always have on hand. The cubed pancetta one finds in a refrigetated section of a supermarket works just fine. Keep it in your freezer. Salt pork lardons are almost as good. I use a recipe that combines elements from the very old cookbooks by Ada Boni and the Romagnolis. Cento brand San Marzano tomatoes, drained and crushed by hand, are a plus. Bucatini aka perciatelli are fun but not essential. Wear an apron when eating. Part of what makes this recipe and the explanations surrounding it so engrossing is the theory that it is really "pasta alla matriciana," which, if believed, means that Amatrice Is not part of the story. In the Rome area, one finds restaurants called La Matriciana or Matricianella. Like so much in Roman restaurant cooking, the stories proliferate as the quality declines.
2
Ada Boni is my goddess.
1
Oops. Me again. I just found the recipe.
Sorry.
4
Why the implicit dig at Marcella, who brought amazing insights into cooking Italian food to so many Americans, including many of our professional chefs? You want to say "How they cook Amatriciana in Amatriciana," go right ahead. Stop there, a full stop.
The reality is that when Marcella wrote her seminal book, it was nearly impossible to find guanciale in the U.S., or the majority of it. Pancetta was hard enough to find then; many folks just used bacon products for her version of Amatriciana and with wonderful results.
I've made versions of Amatriciana with all kinds of pork products and all different shapes of pasta and onions or not. They have mostly all been delicious. Isn't that the essence of food? Tasty, made with love. I wouldn't consider setting Marcella's recipe aside based on this article. In truth, one of the worst ones I've made was been with locally made guanciale. That product varies tremendously in quality and flavor. Sometimes pancetta or a good bacon is better.
Authenticity is not always the best goal. Often, process and patience in cooking matter more -- drawing the essence of the ingredients out through time and temperature. Moreover, as acknowledged, Amatriciana went fusion in the late 1700's when tomatoes were used. I'm wouldn't dare assail anyone in that region for that choice. In fact, I salute them for that bloody brilliant move!
64
@Liane
Here here! Your comment is right on. I lived in rural Maine for a few years and had to make do with what I could get to eat reasonably well, coming from NYC, but I managed.
8
@Liane, Our cook in Rome in the 80s, Otavia, made it with pancetta and bucatini (of course). So, yeah, who cares? It's a peasant dish... that happens to be awesome... if made with love and time. That's all that counts. I remember actually making a bet with my roommates that we couldn't eat all that she had cooked on a single night. I won the bet, and my roommates were bloated for daze. Mangia! Mangia, bella, mangia!
9
@Liane. Marcella - Love her! She's brought so much pleasure to our family.
10
This made me cry - happy tears. Touching.
10
Great article, Stephen Hall! This is one of my favorite dishes and I would love to make the same journey someday.
I see in the comments that a number of U.S. readers are having trouble finding guanciale in order to follow the authentic recipe. I did a quick Google search for you and found that you can buy it online in the U.S.. See for example: https://www.igourmet.com/guanciale.asp
As an additional benefit, if you are able to get guanciale, then you can also make a real carbonara!
Hope this helps!
All the best, Mike
10
After reading this, I decided I had to find some guanciale.
Looks like Olio & Olive (online Italian gourmet store out of Dallas) carries it, in quantities of 4 oz. or 2 lbs. 4 oz.
http://www.olioandolive.com/italian_cured_meats_s/1825.htm
They sell all sorts of products: other cured meats, cheeses, pasta, etc. I will continue searching for a place that carries caciocavallo, a cheese from Sicily!
13
@Amy Wood
Years ago, in a little town in the northern Napa Valley, there was a little market which sold caciocavallo and many other noisome cheeses. I could never get within ten feet of them without feeling nauseated. And back then, this place did not believe in refrigeration, light, or clean floors. Ah, memories !
1
@Bruce Cronin
Good to see the word 'noisome' used properly.
4
@Bruce Cronin
I hate olives and was once stunned when I walked into a small grocery in Venice that had about 20 huge open barrels of olives - each a different type and flavor of olive. The owner told me he imported them from all over Italy.
Food obsessions. Who knew?
2
With all the respect to pasta lovers, I should never travel thousands of miles to savor any Far Eastern flat noodles or Italian cylindrical spaghetti and macaroni. The latter, being tunneled along their axis, do not lend themselves to be sucked neatly into the mouth, if their end remain hanging between one's lips.
3
As a Jew, I can't admit to knowing how good this sauce is, but others tell me it's quite wonderful. And it's good to see something positive in a region that has suffered terribly of late. In bocca al lupo!
22
@Michael Livingston’s - Yahweh will forgive you, if it's not busy watching other things.
10
@Michael Livingston’s
Crepi!!!! That is what Italians respond to "in bocca al lupo"...which basically means "good luck"....and if you answer back "grazie", thank you, then that will bring you bad luck…so you say "Crepi" or even "Crepi al lupo" which means basically croak…And you will have good luck….totally true...
2
My uncle who lives in the city of Rieti (not far from Amatrice) once, talking to me about making l'Amatriciana told me "se vengo a sapere che metti la cipolla nell'Amatriciana, noi non ci parliamo piu`" (if I hear that you used onions in the Amatriciana, we will no longer speak to each other). As a purist when it comes to my beloved Italian food, I fully understood his feelings.
39
@Francois Beaubien The Italians and French can be like that when it comes to food.
8
I once bought guanciale at Salumeria Rossi on the UWS to make this. :)
6
@JayNYC. In NYC you can get it at Fairway, at least at its Broadway store.
3
So nice to have a soothing article on the front page for a change...
49
I guess this means I've never actually tasted Amaticiana. I've always thought of Marcella Hazan as THE authority on Italian cooking, and The Silver Spoon as the bible. Both use pancetta in their recipes (at least The Silver Spoon uses spaghetti instead of bucatini.) The simplicity you describe sounds like it's worth trying, although I'm not sure where I'll be able to find guanciale. Thanks for a wonderful second-hand trip to Amatrice.
5
@John
Hazan made many concessions to American tastes and available ingredients. Although beloved, she is far from the final authority on authenticity.
6
@JR
I do not think Marcella or Victor made many concessions at all. I remember her on the Food Network, dismissively shaking her head and saying things like, "Stuffed manicotti? that's an American dish."
She may have not been the final authority. But Marcella was a darn good one, with a partner who wrote clear, concise cookbooks - a rare talent unto itself.
9
@John
The regional variety of Italian food is wonderful.
The New York chef/culinary explorer Mike Colameco has a great YouTube tour of Sicily with a "sherpa", Melissa Muller, from a Sicilian family, who has written a book on Sicilian food.
They visit all the provinces of Sicily and visit many food food and wine sources and many restaurants.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QVZeTl3xV7I
Their conclusion is that there is no one Sicilian cuisine and, further, that there is no one "authentic" Italian cuisine.
What there is is a wonderful world of Italian taste there to be to be enjoyed.
I love your show Mike, Melissa and all the chefs, cooks and others who contribute to it.
3
I've had it in Tuscany made with a crude rolled pasta called pici -- like bucatini but thicker. (I prefer bucatini!!) I make it in the U.S. using smoked pork jowl, which is widely available. Smithfield brand is easy to find and works well in this dish.
6
@Rich Elias
Smithfield Brand sounds so America is owned by the Chinese. (I boycott it... and as much as possible Amazon "Whole" Foods. American pigs fattening Chinese wallets.
2
Loved your tasting pilgrimage! I once did the same for gazpacho in Andalucia. I loved every one, although each had its personality. Keep on tasting!
8
Thanks for a wonderful, beautifully-written piece, especially about Amatrice. For years, I made amatriciana at home and I while I enjoyed it, it was never the same. Then I asked somebody what I was doing wrong and just like Mr. Hall tells us, the answer was I need to use guanciale. Pancetta does not marry with tomatoes the same way. I can now say my version is getting pretty darn close to the real thing. Romans also have a preference for rigatoni with amatriciana. The bits of guanciale can sneak inside the tubes as you stir the sauce and pasta together.
11
Thank you Stephen for a wonderful article.I was born in Villa S.Angelo,a small village near L'Aquila that was devastate in the 2009 earthquake.I have been back several times since that tragedy,last time this spring, and I can tell you reconstruction is proceeding rapidly.They are mountain people not easily defeated.I urge everyone to visit this beautiful area,enjoy the welcoming people and it's simple tasty food.In L'Aquila itself the most important churches,including Santa Maria di Collemaggio,and medieval palazzos have been restored to it's original design.
Definitely worth the short trip from Rome
29
I’m a geologist who studies earthquakes in central Italy. I visited Amatrice a year before the August 24th earthquake and saw the village and the region in its pre-earthquake state: beautiful, humble, and friendly. I ate delicious food in several of the restaurants. When I came back to work on the earthquake, I couldn’t hold back the tears at seeing the destruction not only to Amatrice but devastating to the entire region.
They experienced not one but three terrifying earthquakes that year. In the time we spent working afterwords (and during one of the earthquakes), I was impressed and comforted by the generosity of the people. Thank you for this article describing so carefully and genuinely this area and their food. Food is the heart and soul of Italy, and there are many other local dishes to try in the partly destroyed and still recovering villages (they will be recovering a long time). I especially recommend visiting Castelluccio, where you can eat a beautiful and simple lentil soup of the same name, grown on the high Castelluccio plain at the base of Mt Vettore. The causative fault line sits like a scar high across the mountain.
77
@Laura Gregory
The lentils from Castelluccio are famous in Italy. And of course delicious. You can eat them anytime, but particularly at New Year's Eve/Day, where the shape of the lentils means good wishes for lots of money coming in for the new year.
5
I love Italian food. I was able to spend a day with an old Italian restaurant owner here in NYC and learned some of his amazing recipes. Just learning how to make an authentic red sauce made me a much better cook.
So please, share a few of these recipes from the article!!!
14
@Old Time Hockey We put in this link to the recipe recommended by Amatrice, but I think many people missed it. Enjoy: https://www.comune.amatrice.rieti.it/gli-spaghetti-allamatriciana/
11
This was hard to find, but do you plan to post an updated recipe on The NY Times cooking app? Would love to save it!
1
@Old Time Hockey
"Giallo Zafferano" is an online authentic Italian cooking site. You do not need to understand Italian, at most you might need to translate the ingredient list. Most of the recipes have easy to follow videos. I guarantee that you will not be disappointed.
4
Great article! Reminds me of how my husband tried to recreate pesto after a trip to the Cinque Terre. After many attempts he achieved a dinner party-worth effort but still not the same as savoring the dish in Vernazza. Would love to read about the writer's experience with that dish!
7
@SDMom
So many people, so many memories of wonderful Italian food.
My memory is from Portofino in 1993.
I still remember a tiny restaurant on the harbor where I was served a simple plate of gnocchi with pesto.
I have tried, many times and without success, to reproduce this simple dish.
Perhaps it was just the location on the harbor.
Grazia, Italia!
4
@SDMom
That is because the basilico used in authentic Ligurian pesto is a specific variety grown only in a specific area. Having extra virgin olive oil from Liguria helps, too.
3
Thanks so much for this! I first had the dish at Archimede....in 1979! Great to see it is still going strong.
11
I've never been to Italy, but I've heard nothing but great things about it's food - even more so than even about France.
6
Go! Trust me. It'll change your life.
19
With all due respect to Hazan, no one in the Mezzogiorno cooks with butter. And yes, guanciale not pancetta.
Aside from the "ancient" versus "traditional" distinction described here, the only regional arguments I've heard are whether to use onions or not.
It's one of my top ten favorite pasta dishes.
10
@JR It's on my Top 10 list too, and I think my wife's. Only problem is that our Top 10 lists each have about 20 pastas.
4
I first learned to make Spaghetti all'Amatriciana as a teenager spending the summer in Florence with my grandparents, brushing up on my family-learned Italian at a local immersion school. To this day, over 20 years later, it remains the ONLY semi-involved dish I can make from memory that doesn't come from a box - I am NOT a good cook, clearly. And for what it's worth, I learned to make it with pancetta. So there's that.
4
Yes, the tomato is native to the western hemisphere. In history, we refer to the transfer as the Colombian Exchange. There's obviously a direct connection to 1492. Italian food, or any other European and Asian cuisine, did not have tomatoes until after the Colombian invasion. That's why we tend to refer to American prehistory as Pre-Columbian history or often archaeology. Andean cultures didn't leave a normal written language for instance and we can still barely understand the Maya. Hence, no "history."
However, the Colombian Exchange set the stage for such world shifting and disparate events as the Irish potato famine and ethanol gas. We often forget the humble tomato somewhere in the mix.
Does that make traditional Italian dishes with tomato blasphemous? Not really. Using a tomato is no more blasphemous than putting butter on your corn cob. America didn't have cows. Hence, no butter.
The idea of Italian cultural identity is both ancient and modern. Depends on how you define "Italian" I guess. As I understand it, Europe is just one big amorphous mess. Draw a hard line anywhere and you're bound to be proven wrong. Technically speaking, Europe isn't even a continent much less a distinct cultural phenomenon.
Personally I'll go with tomatoes and olive oil even if people tell me I'm wrong.
14
@Andy Great strides have been made in the field of Mayan linguistics in the last 20 years, where it went from being basically unintelligible to now being well understood. Be careful making statements about things you don't fully understand.
2
@slowgringo
I spent a good portion of my life studying Mesoamerican and South American archaeology. If you would like to discuss the matter at the next conference, I'll be happy to oblige you. Until then, I'll politely suggest the ancient Mayan texts are still very poorly understood.
We're talking about an ancient culture that was largely extinct before any traditional Latin thought even reached the continent. "Great strides" in Mayan linguistics is at best presumptuous. If you have a problem, I'll refer you to the appendix on Mayan academia.
8
A beautiful article. Thank you.
Beautiful Monti Sibillini.
11
As Hazan boldly states, the basic and fundamental ingredient in Italian cookery is the... anchovy. No matter what kind of pasta sauce, we always start by "melting" anchovies in the hot olive oil. The uninformed may think this will impart a fishy flavor... not at all. No fishy flavor after the sauce is completed. Instead there is a burst of natural MSG intensity to the finished product.
9
@Mark in Louisiana
This may be because the ancient Greeks and Romans used garum in most of their recipes, instead of salt. Garum - which tastes like soy sauce - was made from fermented anchovies.
2
Don't even try to make pasta alla amatriciana with our regular American bacon, instead of pancetta! Beware.
14
@Rodrigo Palacios I disagree. If the choice is making it with bacon or not making it all, one should make it with bacon. Especially if it's really good bacon. Not everyone can find guanciale, and even good pancetta can be hard to find in some places.
5
Actually a titled Italian friend made this often with American bacon and it was utterly delicious. Not the same dish of course—it was many years ago and he couldn’t find guanciale.
4
@Rodrigo Palacios
Well, again, not pancetta, guanciale.
3
It's incredible how even today British and US peoples, still lack any base of Italian cooking, because to cook you must think poor even and specially if you are Jeff Bezos.
So thinking poor wash your hands a lot than act poor: In the best Spaghetti put nothing just oil and bread, eventually the grated bread seared in oil if it is Sunday.
Same for risotto, use only rice, broth and one vegetable.
Same for anything else, remember pizza is only bread, mozzarella and tomato, this is Italian cooking.
97
@Trevigiano not necessarily, just think at the Bolognese cooking....
8
Recipes?? Even if just to know I'll never be able to make it here.
28
@NTL
There are tricks that professional cooks rarely share and this article is no exception. I've been working on this sauce and alla gricia for nearly two decades and, while I continue to get closer, I'm still figuring things out. Of course, it's very simple, like all good Italian cooking. Guanciale is essential as this article points out. Accept no substitute.
6
@NTL Here's a link to the "official" Amatrice recipe: https://www.comune.amatrice.rieti.it/gli-spaghetti-allamatriciana/
7
Please share your findings!
Thank you for this article. It reminded me that many Italians still defend local versions of a particular dish both lovingly and fiercely. See the distinction guanciale/ pancetta and butter/olive oil, which is both obvious and quite important (at least to me).
Thank you also for the loving tribute to the resilience of Amatrice and its inhabitants.
Btw, if you’re interested, the correct spelling is “non c’è più / c’è ancora”.
45
@Antonella Bassi
Not all keyboards have the accented "è" !!!
1
To get a better sense of the damage of the earthquake, go to Google maps - and look for the old town on the Western side. When you move to the street view, which was apparently done in 2011, you see an intact town, but the satellite view shows that the old town is ~90% rubble (and 2019, if the Google legend is to be believed).
13
Many thanks for a poignant, nostalgic, mouthwatering story. One question, though. Can run-of-the-mill hog jowls (easy to find where I live) stand in for guanciale in a pinch? I gather that guanciale is air cured; I suppose smoked hog jowls would be heresy.
14
@Richard Janssen
Good question. But smoked meat would alter the flavor so drastically that you'd have an entirely different dish.
2
@Richard Janssen Looks like a cured but unsmoked pork product with a good fatty streak would be a good bet.
3
I enjoyed this article very much! Now to find some guanciale...
16
@Chris
Hog jowls are not that hard to find.
1
@Chris. You can't find guanciale in a city the size of Chicago??
3
Good to know! I wasn’t bemoaning their lack of availability, just was looking forward to seeking them out to try the recipe.
3
Knowing that I've been doing it wrong all this time I beg you for the correct recipe please :)
19
Hi, there is a link in the article just above the picture of the new restaurants, but here is the link he shared:
https://www.comune.amatrice.rieti.it/gli-spaghetti-allamatriciana/?smid=nytcore-ios-share
3
@Michael Lupinacci
Thanks! I spotted it after I posted my comment and made the dish last night.
Can confirm, it was delicious!
2
My father, who pioneered much of what became the postwar travel business, partnered with the Italian Line to bring Americans to Italy to discover treasures like this. I love finding that these Italians continue to cling to their traditions after all these centuries. And the food's really amazing, too!
18
First time i ever ate the dish I was in love. It had onions which I do love and would love to eat my way through this gastromic journey.
10
The Hazan book is a wonderful resource , she did write it decades ago for the US market, and for those of us who have to make do with ingredients available here. Her claim was never authentically. My family recipes have also evolved over time-grandma used tomato paste in her red sauce because the tomato’s available to her were nothing like home, beef meatballs because it was cheep and she was poor. I now get to evolve those recipes because I can afford it and I can get remarkable, amazing ingredients for a price, but for everyday supermarket cooking Hazan is still my go to!
65
An Italian colleague once proudly brought guanciale from Italy, explaining that even in Rome there are only one or two places to get it. He and his wife were proud members of the Italian Academy of Cuisine and I got to try genuine bucatini all’amatriciana for the first and only time. This was about the least kosher dish imaginable, so I had to be persuaded that it was genuinely worth trying. The chef explained how southern Italy has been historically poor—even eggs were a luxury they didn't have, so they had to learn to match the taste and texture of northern Italian egg pasta without them. Over generations they came to perfect their dishes using only simple local ingredients. And what a memorable taste bucatini all’amatriciana is. I still long for it to this day.
46
@Albert Frantz Millions of Italians across Italy shop at "the only real place to get" ______ (insert object of snobbery, in this case guanciale). The truth is you can get the product many places, and often you can substitute that "incomparable" material with something more locally available.
So go ahead, people, make that Amatriciana with bacon. Sticazzi!!!
4
@Albert Frantz
Nonsense, guanciale is readily available all over Italy. My supermarket carries two versions in the fresh section plus other versions in the section with products in containers.
2
@slowgringo
Sticazzi tu!!! Never amatriciana with bacon or even pancetta!!!! And authentic San Marzano tomatoes with the seals on the cans!!
3
i made this once. don't remember where i got the recipe, but i did make the guanciale. and i remember it did have onions. i look the looks of the white version and will have to try it but guanciale is tough to find in this neck of the woods.
2
@David
Try Russo's in Watertown. We occasionally find it there.
2
@David I have purchased guanciale at Savenor's in Boston. Call first.
2
@David
I've found it at Formaggio Kitchen, in Boston's South End.
1
Finalmente! An authoritative essay on authentic Pasta all' Amatriciana. Thank you!
17
Great review. I am from Rome and this dish and la Carbonara are my favorites.
It is too bad that you can't find imported guanciale in the US.
If in Rome I'd like to recommend the restaurant "Il Pecorino" located in Testaccio, last time I went to Perilli it was a disappointment. "Il Pecorino" makes an exquisite superb Carbonara using just yolks.
21
Guanciale is easy to find in New York these days. I’m sort of surprised to hear that there was ever a time in the past century when it wasn’t, given the city’s history.
And you should generally be skeptical if you see butter in a recipe that purports to be from southern Italy.
5
@stefania
I find guanciale in New York. Brooklyn, but I'm sure elsewhere as well.
2
@stefania I just looked, and it seems you can find guanciale (perhaps not imported) online.
1