Italialicious

Yep, this is another rustic and traditional pasta recipe from Rome. No one exactly knows the origin of this dish, but because carbonara is a cognate of the Italian word carbone (charcoal), some people say this pasta was initially prepared for charcoal workers who needed a hearty meal during their hard work day. In a way there is some truth in this statement since at the beginning of the 20th century, Italian laborers used to carry simple pasta dishes to work, such as spaghetti cacio e pepe. However, coal miners worked in Umbria (and not in Rome), and in fact there are no historical records of spaghetti alla carbonara before World War II. This suggests that a possible origin of this dish was the Italian interpretation of what the American and Canadian soldiers ate while they were in Rome during WW II. Basically, Italians took the quintessential North American breakfast based on eggs and bacon and served it with … pasta, of course!

Ingredients
1 lb spaghetti
5 oz guanciale, diced
4 oz pecorino romano cheese, grated
4 egg yolks
1 egg
Olive oil
Salt, pepper

In a bowl, whisk the egg yolks and the entire egg. Gradually add the cheese while vigorously whisking the egg mixture. Add some freshly ground black pepper to the egg mixture. Meanwhile, begin to cook the pasta. In a saucepan, heat about 1 Tbsp of olive oil, then sauté the diced guanciale until it turns golden. About 1 minute before the pasta is cooked al dente (according to the cooking time on the label instructions), add a couple of Tbsps of the cooking water to the egg mixture. Does it sound familiar? We are tempering the eggs, just as we did when making gelato. When the pasta is al dente, drain it and toss it directly into the pan where you sautéed the guanciale. Then toss the spaghetti into the bowl with the egg mixture. The eggs were raw, but the heat of the pasta will cook them. If you are not convinced of this, make sure you are using pasteurized eggs. Add the guanciale. Give a quick stir and serve your spaghetti alla carbonara with freshly ground black pepper and more grated pecorino romano cheese.

Tips
Common mistakes when people make spaghetti alla carbonara outside Italy: adding onions, butter and cream. The use of cream is something you actually can find in the north of Italy, but this is a Roman dish, so, no cream.

In North America, people associate carbonara sauce with the erroneous version with cream and butter. At the same time, North Americans prepare “coal miner’s spaghetti” which not only has a name that seems to be a translation from Italian (if we believe the mine worker origin), but also the way you prepare coal miner’s spaghetti is more like how you prepare spaghetti alla carbonara. However, coal miner’s spaghetti calls for bacon instead of guanciale, people use a combination of Parmesan and Romano cheeses, parsley is also added, and the ultimate Italian-American ingredient is not absent either: garlic.

Despite the simple ingredients of this dish, spaghetti alla carbonara is pretty tricky to make. Usually what happens is that you get scrambled eggs instead of a creamy egg sauce. The use of cream and onion makes this recipe foolproof, but you should try the traditional recipe.

As you might have noticed, Roman recipes for pasta are extremely simple to make. Spaghetti cacio e pepe means spaghetti with cheese and black pepper, and with these two ingredients you can enjoy a delectable dish of pasta!

Ingredients
1 lb spaghetti
7-8 oz pecorino romano cheese, grated
1 Tbsp olive oil
Freshly ground black pepper

Pour the grated cheese into a bowl. Cook the pasta in plenty of salted boiling water. Just minutes before the pasta is ready, take a couple of tablespoons of the cooking water and add it to the cheese. Whisk until a creamy paste forms (use enough hot cooking water to achieve this). When the pasta is almost al dente (about 1 minute before the total cooking time), drain it and toss the spaghetti into a saucepan with 1 Tbsp olive oil and freshly ground black pepper (reserve about 1 cup of the cooking water). Quickly sauté the spaghetti. Add the creamy cheese mixture and stir for about 1 minute. You may need to add some more cooking water to keep the creamy texture of the sauce. Serve hot with a nice touch of grated pecorino cheese and black pepper.

Tips
If you know some Italian probably you’re more familiar with the word formaggio for cheese. Although formaggio is the most usual word, in Italian you can also say cacio for cheese and, in some dialects, the word cacio is more common. Actually, also in Latin there were two ways of saying cheese: cāseus and formāticus. While the original word for cheese was cāseus, molded cheese was called cāseus formātus, which gave origin to the abbreviation formāticus. Formāticus is the origin of the modern words formaggio in Italian, fromage in French and formatge in Catalan. Cāseus is the origin of the modern words cacio in Italian, queso in Spanish, queijo in Portuguese, Kaese in German, and even cheese in English!

Bucatini all’amatriciana is another very Roman recipe, a red version of spaghetti alla gricia, where the influence of Neapolitan cuisine appears with the use of tomato. While the original recipe comes from the town of Amatrice (now in the Lazio region but before in the Abruzzo region), it is in Rome where people eat bucatini with this sauce. But in Amatrice, sugo all’amatriciana, which means sauce in the Amatrice style, is almost always served with spaghetti. Actually Amatrice claims the invention of spaghetti.

Sugo all’amatriciana is very simple to prepare, although lots of people make the mistake of adding onion to it. Even Italians do it. Even some Romans do it, but people never do it in Amatrice. I was watching Lidia Bastianich on TV once, and I almost fell down when she was blanching some onions for her amatriciana. Good Lord! I must say though that in Italy adding onion to a sauce for pasta is a question of personal taste, but you must take note of the interesting lack of onion in a lot of traditional recipes: puttanesca, amatriciana, arrabbiata, carbonara … no onion at all! And yet, especially when sauce is prepared outside Italy, people tend to use onion. In Chile, where pasta is one of the most common dishes, people use big chunks of onion in their sauces. I’ve heard of some Italians that freak out at how oniony Chilean sauces are! (And I’ve heard of lots of Italians who freak out at how garlicky American sauces are, but that’s another story.)

Ingredients
1 lb bucatini
4-5 oz guanciale
12 oz passata di pomodoro (good quality tomato sauce) or canned San Marzano tomatoes
1 cup white wine
1 Tbsp olive oil
1 pinch peperoncino (red pepper flakes)
4 Tbsp pecorino romano cheese, grated
Salt, black pepper

Dice the guanciale. In a saucepan over medium heat, sauté the diced guanciale with the olive oil and peperoncino. When the guanciale begins to lose its fat, add the wine. Sauté until the guanciale turns golden. Take the guanciale from the saucepan and reserve. Start cooking the pasta in salted boiling water. While the pasta is cooking, heat the tomato sauce in the same saucepan where you sautéed the guanciale. Add the guanciale and continue heating the sauce until the pasta is al dente. When the pasta is ready, drain it and toss it directly into the saucepan with the sauce. Give a quick stir, add some black pepper and serve with pecorino cheese!

Tips
In Rome some locals call this sauce matriciana. That’s why some people argue that the Roman version with bucatini (and onion according to some other people) has nothing to do with the amatriciana from Amatrice (with absolutely no onion, often served with spaghetti, and sometimes using pancetta instead of guanciale, the latter being considered too poor as an ingredient). Actually they claim that the word matriciana comes from the Latin word matrix in reference to motherhood and matriarchy: an argument that, they claim, shows how ancient the Roman recipe is (they forget that tomatoes were introduced from America though). However, a common feature of Romanesco or the Italian dialect from Rome is dropping vowels, so not surprisingly people simply say matriciana in Rome.

This is another extremely simple recipe from the Roman kitchen to yours. If you know some Italian I’m sure you’ll be surprised by the name of this recipe. Maybe you would recognize better aglio, olio e peperoncino. While aglio, olio e peperoncino is standard Italian, ajo, ojo e peperoncino is Roman dialect or romanesco. Both mean garlic, oil and hot pepper. As a matter of fact, these are exactly the ingredients we’ll use.

Ingredients
1 lb spaghetti
1-2 garlic cloves, minced
5 Tbsp Olive oil
1½ Tbsp peperoncino (red pepper flakes – or 2 small and fresh hot peppers)

Cook the pasta in plenty of salted boiling water. Just minutes before the pasta is ready, sauté the garlic with the olive oil in a saucepan over medium heat. Add the peperoncino. When the pasta is al dente, drain it and reserve about ¼ cup of the cooking water. Toss the pasta over the quick soffritto and add the reserved starchy water. Give a quick stir and serve!

This might be the easiest pasta dish to make! And this recipe is the real McCoy, in the sense that other traditional Roman dishes like bucatini all’amatriciana and spaghetti alla carbonara were inspired by bucatini alla gricia.

Ingredients
1 lb bucatini pasta
5 oz guanciale (Italian unsmoked bacon), diced
4 Tbsp pecorino romano cheese, grated
Freshly ground black pepper

Cook the pasta in plenty of salted boiling water. In the meantime, in a saucepan over medium heat sauté the guanciale until nice and golden. When the pasta is al dente, drain it and reserve about ¼ cup of the cooking water. Toss the pasta over the guanciale, add the cheese, some freshly ground black pepper, and the reserved starchy water. Give a quick stir and serve!

Tips
Pasta alla gricia is supposed to come from the town of Grisciano near Rome. The absence of tomatoes indicates its ancient origins: pasta alla gricia was eaten before tomatoes were introduced to Europe from South America.

Bucatini are like thick spaghetti with a transversal hole inside. Buco means hole in Italian.

The traditional recipe calls for guanciale, a kind of Italian unsmoked bacon (actually, cured and unsmoked pig jowl). However, New York City is the only place I know in North America where you can find guanciale (in one store in the middle of the meat district). So, it's only for this reason that you’re temporarily allowed to use pancetta or unsmoked bacon instead… but if you’re in New York, then you MUST get some guanciale! The same thing will apply to every recipe calling for guanciale.

This is a super simple pasta dish to make and a perfect example of the Roman cucina povera. Penne all’arrabbiata means penne pasta in a rage… and their anger is expressed by being really spicy!

Ingredients
1 lb penne pasta
1 ¾ cup passata di pomodoro or good tomato sauce
2 Tbsp peperoncino (red pepper flakes – or 2 small and fresh hot peppers)
2 garlic cloves, minced
4 Tbsp olive oil
1 bunch Italian parsley, chopped

Cook the pasta in salted boiling water. Meanwhile, in a saucepan over medium heat and using 2 Tbsp of olive oil, sauté the garlic together with the peperoncino for a minute or so (be careful since we don’t want to burn the garlic). Add the tomatoes and the remaining 2 Tbsp of olive oil. Let the sauce cook for about 5 minutes, just until the pasta is al dente. Drain the pasta and toss it over the sauce. Give a quick stir, add the parsley, and your penne all’arrabbiata is ready to serve!

Tips
Instead of tomato sauce, you can also use about 15 oz ripe tomatoes (peeled, chopped and seeds discarded) or 15 oz canned San Marzano tomatoes (pelati).

If you want a less-angry version of penne all’arrabbiata, use 1 garlic clove and 1 Tbsp peperoncino.

In Italy, pasta is condita, which means seasoned with a sauce. That’s why you’d probably find traditional recipes a bit scarce in sauce by international standards.

So, there’s no cheese in this recipe? In traditional recipes, usually cheese is not added to a sauce when you’re using garlic.

Despite my love for Giada de Laurentiis, arrabbiata sauce does not call for pancetta or bacon. If you use pancetta then you’ll be getting something closer to pasta all’amatriciana. The use of onion is also a widespread mistake. In sum, onion, pancetta and cheese (even pecorino romano) are considered a sacrilege to the traditional recipe!