Pasta Amatriciana (Pasta all'Amatriciana)

Category: Dishes from cereals and flour products

Kitchen: italian

Pasta Amatriciana (Pasta all'Amatriciana)

Ingredients
Guanchiale	125 gram
Pasta Bucatini	400 gram
Peeled sterilized tomatoes	400 gram
Pecorino Romano cheese	100 + 50 grams
Dry white table wine	50-100 ml
Olive oil	1-3 tbsp. l.
Ground black pepper, red capsicum, salt	taste

Cooking method

Ingredients
The strict composition of the ingredients of SALSA ALL'AMATRICIANA sauce and pasta based on it is regulated by a production discipline document (DISCIPLINARE DI PRODUZIONE), protected by the De.Co origin label (Denominazione Comunale). You can download, translate, and familiarize yourself with it by 🔗
The ingredients from this document for the "red" sauce, ie tomato sauce (SALSA ALL'AMATRICIANA ROSSA) for 4 people are as follows:
1.500 grams of pasta;
2. 125 grams "Guanciale Amatriciano DE.CO.";
3. One tablespoon of extra virgin olive oil;
4. A little dry white wine;
5. 6 or 7 fresh San Marzano tomatoes or 400 grams of quality peeled tomatoes;
6. A little fresh or dried capsicum;
7. Salt and black pepper to taste.
8. Grated Pecorino di Amatrice cheese - no matter how much it is, to taste (quantity is not regulated) ...
Looking ahead, I will say that 500 grams of pasta for 4 people is probably designed for four hungry shepherds. In fact, this can feed 4-8 people, depending on their constitution, gender, and appetite.
Which of these I have in stock:
1. Pasta Bucatini (Pasta Bucatini): 350-400 grams.
Traditionally, Pasta all'Amatriciana is made with Spagetti, Bucatini, or Rigatoni. Although, the Italians themselves put on this rule a "device" with which our current Ukrainian president knows how to play the piano, and without fear or reproach they prepare this dish with any kind of pasta that comes to hand.
Now I wanted to cook this pasta not with banal spaghetti, but with bucatini. Fortunately, we are not in short supply of this good now - you can find on sale both Italian bucatinis and decent bucatinis of Ukrainian brands, made of extra class Durum durum flour.
500 grams of pasta for so many other ingredients - from my own experience I can say that this is a lot. Take 350-400 grams of bucatini, and this is enough to feed 4 people to their fill, and the taste will be richer.
2. Guanciale: 125 grams.
Dried pig cheek. It is rubbed with salt, sugar and spices (black and red pepper, thyme, fennel, garlic). Guanciale ripens in special chambers, usually from 1 to 3 months. During this time, the cheek loses up to 30% of its weight. Its aroma is stronger than other dry-cured pork products and the texture is more delicate.
With its characteristic triangular shape, Guanciale Amatriciana ranks among the PAT - traditional agri-food products, with its intense and decisive taste and typical white color in the fatty part and bright red in the non-fatty part. Produced in the fall, starting with the clipping of the cheek of a local heavy pig, the aromas burst after 1 to 3 months. Sometimes Guanciale is smoked for a short time on oak or beech wood, but such smoked Guanciale is not used in Amatriciana sauce, just like any other smoked product is not used here.
I don't have an Italian guanchiale - this Italian delicacy is not yet imported into Ukraine (or I haven't found it). And in Italy itself, guanchiale is also not sold on every corner. But then we already have our own, Ukrainian guanchiale, manufactured by Karo Food under the Ham.Lo trademark (Ham with Love, 🔗), whose production facilities are located near Kiev, Boryspil district, the village of Glubokoe. This is not a manufacturer's advertisement. It's just that in Ukraine, it seems, there is nowhere else to get guanchiale, and on the website of this manufacturer you can view retail chains where you can try to find their guanchiale, or order the required right on the site ...
For some reason, our Ukrainian guanchiale is much thinner than a typical Italian one (are fat pigs extinct in Ukraine?), And the form of trimming is not neat, so there is something to work on. But the smell from this dry-cured cheek is confidently HAMON, aromatic, excellent taste, moderately salty, moderately spicy, moderately spicy. Well, and the price is not at all "Italian" ... While I was composing this opus, my wife ate half of one cheek of this guanchiale, and said "bring more" ...
In the absence of this guanchiale in your / our penates, it can be replaced with dry-cured prosciutto or coppa (preferably a part with a fair amount of lard), or with something other dry-cured, aged, with spices, with a fair amount of lard, from what you can get in your edges. Italians themselves do not hesitate to use pork bacon here. But not smoked meats ...
3. Pecorino cheese: 100 + 50 grams
This is the component that cannot be replaced by anything in this recipe. Only Pecorino, sheep's milk cheese. Not Parmizano Reggiano, Not Grana Padano! It would be strange if the sheep shepherds, who are the original authors of the ancient recipe of Gricia (Gricia), the prototype of this sauce, would use cheese here, which is made from buffalo milk, and not local sheep.
No, - of course, if you wish, you can use Parmisano Reggiano, Grana Padano, and even something "local spill" here. And it is possible that it will even be delicious. But then such a sauce and such a pasta can hardly be associated with the name all'Amatriciana ...
We will use 100 grams of Pecorino Romano in the sauce, and another 30-50 grams for sprinkling the finished dish on the plates.
Pecorino Romano is saltier and sharper compared to Pecorino Amatrice, but I have never met the latter on our sale. And in Italy itself, they say, this is a rarity ...
4. Tomatoes: 400 grams.
This dish requires ripe sweet and sour juicy meaty peeled tomatoes. Ideal - Italian tomatoes of the San Marzano variety (San Marzano). In our temperate latitudes, the San Marzano tomato is grown relatively recently, this was allowed by the hardening produced by the breeders. The popularity of the variety is due, first of all, to the excellent taste of the fruit and the property of the skin that is easy to remove during cooking.
Personally, I have never met "live" with us fresh tomatoes of this variety on sale. But in YouTube videos, of which there are a great many, where Italian chefs and amateurs prepare this pasta (no translation is required there - and so almost everything is clear), Italians are actively making their lives easier by using canned sterilized tomatoes in their own juice. This is understandable - this pasta is prepared all year round, and not only during the harvest season. So I will go the same lazy way. Quite by chance, luck smiled at me - I "attacked" the Italian sterilized San Marzano in its own juice, net 400 grams. Yes, a little expensive, but authentic, and very, very tasty! There are only a few soft, whole, skinless tomatoes in the jar, shaped like our cream, and tomato juice from the same tomatoes. And nothing else - not even salt. And it was a specific call for me, after the guanciale, inviting me to cook pasta with this sauce ...
In general, here you can use any high-quality canned sterilized whole peeled tomatoes, where there is an inscription “Whole Peeled Tomatoes”, “Pomodori pelati”, “Solo pomodoro”, or “Tomatoes / Tomatoes in their own juice” or “Tomatoes / Tomatoes blanched whole sterilized ". Or even canned chopped tomatoes in their own juice - why not? Just look at the composition - it is desirable to contain only tomatoes and juice from them. If there are extraneous additives, I recommend looking at a similar product from another manufacturer.
Never use ready-made tomato sauce with additives, tomato paste, or, God forbid, ketchup in this dish - this can also be delicious, but this will be a very serious mistake, since it will no longer be Pasta all'Amatriciana, but something else. But the Italians quite use canned, pure from additives, tomato puree in this sauce ...
5. Olive oil, dry white wine, black pepper, red pepper.
If you watch a few videos from YouTube of the fascinating process of preparing this pasta, you will notice that traditionally Italians cook this pasta in stainless steel pans or saucepans. And the owners of such stainless steel pans are well aware that if, before laying food, such a pan is not sufficiently heated, and not even a drop of vegetable oil is poured into it, and again it is not heated, then there is every chance that the contents of the pan will firmly boil to the bottom of such a pan, and you will have to tear it off with your teeth. Hence the presence of this spoonful of olive oil in the recipe. Although, if you have a frying pan or stewpan with a non-stick coating, or a prepared cast iron frying pan, or glazed ceramics, then vegetable oil is not at all necessary - the greasy cheek fat will give enough fat, and this one spoonful of oil does not make any difference in this sauce at all. But if you use "thin" bacon or prosciutto, then two or three tablespoons of olive oil will be simply necessary here ...
Dry white wine is used here to add wine sourness to the sauce. No wine? - not a problem, - tomatoes, which have sugar acidity, will give a certain amount of sourness. By the way, the Italians themselves sometimes use not white, but red dry wine here.
Black pepper is used here not so much for pungency as for flavoring the finished dish. Therefore, it is advisable to use not ready-made commercial black pepper powder here, but grind the pepper yourself with a pepper grinder, if available.
Here is a red hot pepper (peperoncino) used here to spice up the sauce. But be careful - guanchiale itself has a speck, because it is cooked with a fair amount of black pepper. Therefore, a reasonable restriction is required here with both peppers - this sauce is not at all from the category of Korean cuisine burning mouth and stomach. It is better to give up capsicum altogether if you are not sure of the sharpness of the finished dish acceptable to you.
Cooking procedure.
In terms of the complexity of preparation, this pasta is somewhere not far from fried eggs fried in lard. That is, it is quite simple, and once you cook it, this recipe will seem to you generally elementary (which in principle it is), with all the necessary ingredients.
First of all, we put a pot of water for the pasta on the fire. Let the water boil and be ready for bucatini.

Cut the guanciale into slices first.

Then from these slices it is necessary to cut off the hard skin, and then the thin upper part, where there was a spice. If this is not done, then the finished dish may then taste a little bitter.

Here we will do the trick read in one of the recipes on the Italian website. Without waiting for the water to boil, let's throw in the cuttings from the guanchiale. These we will kill three birds with one stone: the fat from the scraps, dissolved in water, will not allow the paste to stick together, it will enrich the paste with its aroma, and the boiled scraps will become soft, and they can be used in other dishes, or just eat with pleasure.

Cut the guanchiale into thin strips for frying.

In a frying pan - and this time I have a wok with a non-stick coating - pour a little, by eye, olive oil ...

... and put guanchiale in it.

We quickly fry it until crispy, but not yet completely fried cracklings.

Pour into a frying pan and evaporate 50-100 ml of dry wine, and put all the contents of a jar with tomatoes to the cracklings

With a meatball, a fork, or just with your hands, as Italians practice, we break soft tomatoes into small fractions, but without fanaticism - when stewing and stirring, canned tomatoes will naturally turn into an almost homogeneous mass of puree.

Salt the sauce to taste and sprinkle with black pepper.Caution! - Taste the guanciale - it can be salty. Moreover, the pecorino is quite salty. Therefore, here with salt you need to be careful enough ...

While the sauce is cooking over medium heat (stirring), rub the cheese.

After about 5 minutes after laying the tomatoes, remove the trim from the pan with water ...

And put the paste in the water.

After the cooking time indicated on the package to the aldente state, and not for a second more, take out the finished pasta and transfer it to the pan with the already thickened sauce. The sauce should remain thin, and certainly not evaporated to a thick tomato paste. It will saturate the boiled pasta with itself.

Sprinkle about 2/3 of the grated pecorino cheese on top.

And actively mix the pasta with sauce and cheese.

Let's try the toothpaste. If it seems to you that the pasta is still hard, pour one or two ladles of hot water from the pasta saucepan into the pan, and continue stirring the pasta over medium heat until the liquid evaporates - the pasta will come to readiness. But be careful - Italians warn that it is these bucatini, this kind of pasta, that are easy to digest ...

All! Done! We spread the contents of the pan into plates, from the bottom of the pan, collect the remaining sauce and pieces of guanchiale, and pour-sprinkle on the pasta in the plates, sprinkle with black pepper, for flavor, and the remaining grated pecorino, for taste.

Yes, this is not a "gourmet" dish. But it is nutritious, fast, and most importantly - very tasty!

Bon Appetit!

The dish is designed for

4 servings

Time for preparing:

about 30 min

Note

In our open spaces, the delicious Italian dish "Pasta alla Carbonara" is quite popular, the recipes for which are also on our Bread Maker. However, in Italy itself, in terms of age and popularity, this pasta is ahead of other pasta, the most popular Italian dish in the world after Neapolitan pizza. This is not kosher, vegetarian, or dietary. Historically, this is the food of the Monti della Laga (Abruzzian Apennines) shepherds who drove flocks of sheep across the mountains, and for this work they needed a simple but high-calorie food from local products.

This is the most mysterious of all existing pasta options, still causing a lot of controversy and having several "philosophical currents" - "Amatriciana pasta" (Pasta all'Amatriciana).
In fact, both Amatrichana sauce and Carbonara sauce are almost twin brothers, hatched in the same nest, but at some stage each went their own way - one towards the tomato side at the end of the 18th century, the other towards the egg side, approximately in the 19th-20th centuries:

At the beginning, many centuries ago, the shepherds of the Lazio region, from local handy products that you can take with you on the road, invented the dish "Cacio e pepe" (kacho є pepe), which literally means "cheese and pepper" ... In the town of Grisciano, which is next to the town of Amatrice, this recipe was improved by adding to it the fried dry-cured cheek guanciale (Guanciale, in the dialect of Rome - this is "barbozzo", barbozzo in romanesco), which made a different dish - gritsa or grisha (gricia). And after Columbus's fascinating journey to America, tomatoes came to Italy from Mexico and Peru, and the inhabitants of the town of Amatrice in the second half of the 18th century began to make Grisha with these tomatoes, which is why Amatriciana was born, or simply Matriciana in the Roman dialect (matriciana in romanesco ).
The first description of Amatricana was by Francesco Leonardi, a native Roman chef who served at the Quirinale (Papal residence from 1605 to 1870), in the seven-volume encyclopedia of culinary arts L'Apicio Moderno, written by him in 1790.
And in the XIX-XX centuries (it is not known for sure) eggs were added to the Grisha, thus obtaining the Carbonara paste.

And if there are no questions with cheese and guanciale, then the certainty with the rest of the ingredients in this Amatricana sauce ends there. Who would have thought that such a simple elementary recipe in Italy still raises a real storm!
The first philosophical trend argues that tomatoes are not used in Amatricana sauce and must be "white" (with guanciale and onions).The second philosophical trend claims that there is a place for tomatoes in Amatricano sauce, but there is no place for garlic or onions. Still others fight for the presence of pepper and onions and the absence of garlic. There are countless videos on YouTube, where both amateur and Italian chefs demonstrate their "correct" and original recipes for making pasta based on this Amatricana or Matricana sauce. And the most interesting thing there is the Italians' comments to these videos, where a uniform srach often unfolds about the authenticity, correctness or deliciousness of a particular recipe. And some Italian personalities are stubbornly trying to prove that the town of Amatrice has nothing to do with the “Roman” sauce of Matricana, and this dish has a purely Roman origin. In general, they have fun there with this sauce and dish ...
And tired of the arguments of professional chefs, historians, and the municipality of Amatrice, housewives persistently continue to cook Amatrichana with guanchiale, onions, garlic, peppers, tomatoes year after year - and they are so delicious! Indeed, often, the original recipe tastes better than the hardened primitive ...
But the authorities of the town of Amatrice do not sleep, and are vigilant how the correct recipe for the sauce All'Amatriciana, protected by the De.Co (Denominazione Comunale) label of origin, is being respected. During the 'C'e per te per te' program, renowned chef Carlo Cracco, who served as guest of honor, said that for one of the most famous Italian dishes in the world, Amatriciana, to be fully successful, it is also necessary to use 'poached garlic ". The "blasphemy" did not escape the watchful eye of the municipal administration of the Amatrice commune, which quickly tweeted a note to correct Krakko's claim and offensively change the chef's name to "Gracco".
The municipality of Amatrice, with the support of the Lazio region, has been trying for more than 10 years to obtain the All'Amatriciana sauce the STG label of the European Union - Specialità Tradizionale Garantita (Guaranteed Traditional Products). If recognized, this will enable a powerful export of the Amatrice / Lazio products traditionally used in this sauce, and will put an end to the question of the correct ingredients of this sauce within Italy and the entire European Union. To date, only two Italian products are STG. These include Mozzarella and Pizza napoletana.

This sauce is especially popular in the Roman region, and we can say that Pasta alla Matriciana is almost a visiting card of Rome. In the classic guides of modern Roman cuisine, the composition of the ingredients of this pasta is more varied, where both onions and garlic are allowed, and other deviations from the requirements of the Amatricians. There is also a kosher Amatriciana in the Roman manuals, adapted to the rules of Kashrut. Pecorino or other types of cheese are not used in its preparation, olive oil is used instead of lard, and pork cheek is replaced by beef jerky.
The spread of Amatricana sauce nationwide occurred in the 19th century, when many Amatricians emigrated to Rome due to the cattle crisis and, finding work in restaurants, made this dish of their ancestors famous. The first historic Amatriciane restaurant in Rome dates back to 1860 and was called Il Passetto because one could walk through it from Vicolo del Passetto to Piazza Navona.
On the night of August 24, 2016, trouble struck the central region of Italy. The 6.2 magnitude earthquake caused destruction and loss of life (at least 290 people died), leaving thousands of residents in the areas of Lazio, Umbria, Marche and Abruzzo homeless.

For months, the 16,000-strong town of Amatrice, one of the hardest hit by the earthquake, has been in the media spotlight and the sauce has become a symbol of solidarity with the victims of the disastrous earthquake. Since then, pasta, dressed with the famous guanciale sauce, tomatoes and pecorino cheese, is now served in many restaurants in Italy and around the world that have joined the "Amatriciana Solidale" movement.The group works in Italy and abroad, raising funds for those who have been forced to leave their ruined homes, the so-called "earthquakes" (terremotati). One of the first to join the Solidarity Pasta initiative is British chef Jamie Oliver and 700 other chefs who work with him. Russian model Natalya Vodianova launched a fundraiser “Mangia per l'Italia” (“Eat for Italy”) to bring this “paste of solidarity” Amatrichan into the menu of restaurants in the Russian Federation. A percentage of the sales proceeds went to Save the Children, the Red Cross, and other organizations at the site of the disaster.

It was unexpected - sad, but the success of the sauce, but it caused an excessive demand for Guanciale compared to what was then available in Italy, and in a short time the stock of this delicacy in Italy simply dried up, for a while. Some manufacturers have put up Guanciales that have not yet matured properly, and Italian Prosciutto and Pancetta ham are also used, although they are coarser than Guanciale cheeks.
In addition to pasta with this Amatricana sauce (SALSA ALL'AMATRICIANA), Italians also cook (this is just what I discovered):
• oven-baked pasta Amatriciana (Pasta al forno con sugo amatriciana)
• pizza Amatriciana (Pizza all'Amatriciana)
• risotto Amatriciana (risotto all'Amatriciana)
• Amatriciana gnocchi (gnocci con sugo all'Amatriciana)
• lasagne all'Amatriciana
• frittata all'amatriciana
• polenta with meat balls and sauce (POLENTA CON POLPETTE E SUGO ALL'AMATRICIANA)
• meatballs with Amatricana sauce (Polpette all'amatriciana)
• Amatricana croutons (crostini all'amatriciana)
• Amatriciana eggs (l'uovo all'Amatriciana)
• liquid ravioli Amatriciana with pecorino fondue (ravioli liquidi di Amatriciana con fonduta di pecorino)
• rice balls with Breaded Amatricana sauce (Supplì all'amatriciana)
• something like an Italian hot dog with Panino all'amatriciana sauce
• Burger Amatricana (AMATRICIANA BURGER)
• baked bone marrow of Amatriciana (Baked marrow amatriciana)
• well, you get the idea - and so on ...
Traditionally, in late August - early September, when a fresh crop of tomatoes is harvested, the municipality of Amatrice holds the Sagra degli Spaghetti all'Amatriciana festival for several days, where residents and guests of Amatrice are plentifully treated with this huge amount of pasta. See the town of Amatrice before the 2007 earthquake and this festival in a short 3-minute video from YouTube (in the link
P.S. In fact, there are a great many ways and techniques for making this pasta, which simply cannot be described in one recipe. But all this can be seen on videos on the Internet.
P.P.S. As usual, according to Italian tradition, you should not decorate a plate with this pasta with aromatic basil leaves, parsley, or mint. This pasta has its own unique bouquet of aromas from guancheale, cheese, pepper and tomatoes, which should not be interrupted by any herbs.
P.P.P.S. When eating this pasta, the "macaroni" curled and dangling on a fork are always eager to share the red tomato sauce with your clothes, especially in the chest area. Therefore, do not hesitate to put on a bib, or tuck a cloth napkin behind the collar. I warned you!
P.P.P.P.S. Unfortunately, I never had a chance to visit Italy. And I don't know Italian. All material was compiled according to information that is freely available on the Internet, translated by a google translator. If someone notices any inaccuracy, or shares their experience and recipe for this sauce and this pasta, I will only be grateful!