The Capsule Pantry: Pasta Amatriciana
When in Rome...
The Capsule Pantry in one sentence: Reduce your food waste by “thinking like a chef” with highly flexible recipes based on a capsule pantry of just 50 ingredients.
Living in Rome for a month has been on my bucket list for years. On Sunday, it became a reality (well, 3 weeks, but that’s close enough for me).
Like so many millions before me, I’ve come here to eat. In particular, the four pasta dishes Rome is so famous for: Carbonara, Gricia, Cacio e Pepe and Amatriciana. I want to know how to make them properly with local ingredients. I want to learn how to emulsify my sauces properly. Most of all, I want to eat them. And lots of them.
I started with Amatriciana, both eating it out and making it at home. This is the sort of recipe I love. Very simple but if you get the right ingredients - and get that sauce right - it’s elevated beyond a simple tomato pasta.
It’s also very Simple and Straightfoward-friendly. Like most Italian dishes, there are hundreds of variations depending on whose nonna is making it. And it can be made mostly with what you probably have in your cupboard and fridge at home, especially if you follow my capsule storecupboard.
Let’s do as the Romans do and get cooking.
Key: Bold = Capsule Pantry ingredients
Serves 4
100g guanciale (cured pig cheek), good quality pancetta, or unsmoked dry-cured bacon cut into small cubes or batons. You only need a small amount of meat so buy the best you can afford.
2 garlic cloves, finely minced
A small glass of white wine
One 400g / 14oz can of good quality (as good as you can afford) Italian tomatoes, mashed up / pureed in the blender
300-350g / 10-12oz good quality dried pasta - Bucatini or Tortiglioni are traditional
Pecorino Romano / Parmesean cheese, grated
Bring a kettle of water to boil.
Put the guanciale into a cold frying pan and turn on the heat. Slowly fry it until the fat starts to render and the meat becomes crispy. Remove and place onto kitchen roll, but keep the fat in the pan.
Turn off the heat for a moment to let the fat cool a little bit then add your garlic to the fat. Turn the heat back on and fry the garlic for a few moments until it starts to brown (be careful not to let it burn).
Throw in a splash of white wine - around a glass's worth - and let it bubble until you’ve reduced it by about two thirds.
Add the tomatoes and season with salt and black pepper. The sauce will simmer for about 10 minutes so soon after it’s on, you’ll want to cook your pasta.
Get the pasta on. You want it al dente so start checking it after about 6-8 minutes for done-ness. Many Italians recommend cooking pasta until it’s a minute off being done, then adding it to the sauce then finishing off the cooking in there.
As the sauce cooks down, add half a ladle or so of starchy water from the pasta and stir. Wait until that’s simmered down, add a little more starchy water and keep stirring. The water will emulsify with the fat from the guanciale which will create a glossy sauce.
Drain the pasta - but catch the starchy water in a bowl - and quickly add the pasta to the sauce. This is when your starchy pasta water comes into play. Keep on adding small amounts and simmering for a couple of minutes until you’ve got a thick sauce and the pasta is cooked.
Turn out into pasta dishes and grate mountains of Pecorino cheese over the top.
Dietary restrictions
This dish is naturally nut-free.
Make this a vegetarian dish by omitting the guanciale / pancetta / bacon. Start instead by heating some oil and adding the garlic, following the recipe from then on. You’ll be amazed how good this simple sauce is. A handful of crispy fried breadcrumbs can make a delicious (and vegetarian/vegan) alternative to grated cheese.
Make it vegan by adding grated vegan cheese on top, or omitting the cheese (and pork of course) altogether.
If you have a gluten intolerance, use gluten-free pasta.
Substitutions / additions
Some Italians add finely chopped onion to the mix. Cook it in the pork fat before adding your garlic for 5 minutes or until translucent.
Chilli flakes are another acceptable addition - a pinch or so at the time of adding your tomatoes.
You can use fresh tomatoes but only do this if they’re in season. Chop them up and simmer for 10 minutes or so longer than you would with canned tomatoes.
The picture for this dish was made with Trganci pasta, my go-to fresh pasta that makes only a minute or two longer to make than boiling dried pasta. The only difference is that it takes just a couple of minutes to cook, so bear that in mind whilst adding ladles of water to the dish. You don’t want to be so focused on that, you forget to drain your pasta on time!
Hot Italian recipe tip - use this website
Not many people know about this website outside of Italy, but there is a place online that gathers together the “official” recipe for almost every Italian dish you can think of.
The Accademia Italiana Della Cucina was founded in the 1950s and became an official cultural institution about 20 years ago.
There are literally thousands of recipes from all over Italy. If you want to know how to make Italian food the “proper” way, this is the place to go. You need to sign up to use it and the whole thing is in Italian, but hey, this is what Google Translate was invented for.