Dinner Tonight: Spaghetti all'Amatriciana
When I cooked this pasta the other night, spaghetti all'amatriciana, I was surprised to find that it hasn't made its way onto the Dinner Tonight column already. It's one of my favorite quick dinners. A bit like pasta carbonara, it's a member of a trio of pastas based around bacon and cheese in the area of Italy around Rome. The closest cousin is pasta alla gricia (sometimes known as "amatriciana bianco"), with just bacon, cheese, pasta, and sometimes chili or sausage depending on who you ask. Carbonara never has chili but adds egg and lots of extra pepper. Amatriciana draws its deliciousness from the sweetness of onion and tomato.
If you can find guanciale (a type of bacon made from pig jowl), it's truly superior, but pancetta or American bacon will do fine. I use tomato sauce when I have it on hand, but simply starting from canned tomatoes and simmering the sauce a little longer is about the same. This recipe from the Babbo restaurant website calls for thick half moons of red onion, which brings a sweetness I think works wonderfully against the spice of the chili and the acidity of the tomato. Truly a classic, standout dish.
Pasta all'Amatriciana
- serves 4 -
Adapted from Babbo.com.
Ingredients
1/2 pound guanciale or pancetta, thinly sliced and cut into small pieces
3 cloves garlic
1 large red onion, halved and sliced 1/2-inch thick
1 teaspoon hot red pepper flakes
Salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste
1 1/2 cups basic tomato sauce, or a 14-ounce can of tomatoes
1 pound pasta, traditionally bucatini
1 cup flat-leaf parsley, leaves only
Pecorino Romano cheese, for grating
Procedure
1. Bring a large pot of salty water to boil.
2. In the meantime, heat a large skillet over medium-low heat and add the guanciale, pancetta, or bacon. Cook gently as the fat begins to render, turning occasionally. When it begins to brown, add the red onion, garlic, chili flakes and a splash of olive oil if the bacon hasn't rendered enough fat to coat the vegetables.
3. Increase the heat to medium-high and cook until the onions are soft and beginning to brown and the bacon is golden brown. Add the tomato sauce or canned tomatoes with their juice. If using canned tomatoes, break them up with a wooden spoon and cook them down for 20-25 minutes. If using sauce, simmer for 10 minutes. Season to taste with salt and pepper.
4. Cook the pasta until just before al dente, then reserve some pasta water and drain. Add the pasta to the tomato sauce to finish cooking, adding pasta water to keep it moist if necessary. Add the parsley, toss well, and divide among plates. Top with cheese and serve immediately.
View other entries from Dinner Tonight.
Add a comment:
Previewing your comment:
HTML Hints
Some HTML is OK: <a href="URL">link</a>, <strong>strong</strong>, <em>em</em>
Comment Guidelines
Post whatever you want, just keep it seriously about eats, seriously. We reserve the right to delete off-topic or inflammatory comments. Learn more at our Comment Policy page.
If you see something not so nice, please, report an inappropriate comment.
9 Comments:
This is going on the list for sure! I love Pasta all'Amitriciana!
chanterelle at 8:40PM on 12/18/08
one of my favorite pasta's of all time..... very underrated..... looks delicious.... mmmmmmm.........i just smoked a piece of bacon and now i know what i can do with it..... mmmmmm..... mmmmmmmm.... mmm!
pooch at 11:16PM on 12/18/08
This is one of my favorite pasta dishes of all time. I love the contrast of flavors.
galeogirl at 12:56AM on 12/19/08
Just had this for dinner last night! It's beyond satisfying to eat this after work on a cold night with a glass of wine.
Junie at 8:34AM on 12/19/08
I know this is probably blasphemy, but I used sausage because it was the only meat I had in the house - it was delicious, though - and extremely easy to make.
PhredYammers at 8:51AM on 12/19/08
Mmm, definitely going to make this tonight, but this page is full of errors and inconsistencies. The post headline says spaghetti, the headnote says spaghetti, the photo shows ziti, and the recipe says to use bucatini. The directions and headnote call for bacon as an option, but bacon isn't listed in the ingredients list. The directions also mention olive oil as an option, but it's not listed in the ingredients list. There is no direction to chop or mince the garlic at all, but of course you shouldn't add the whole cloves to the dish. The half-moons of onion sound interesting, but where are those in the photo? I'd swear there are some olives in the photo, but not in the recipe. The recipe calls for whole parsley leaves, but I'm pretty sure that's a chiffonade of basil in the photo. You must at least chop the parsley, right? The ingredients list calls for hot red pepper flakes, but the directions say chili flakes. (I know they're the same thing, but it's still odd.) And that's just the obvious stuff. Some cooking times for the onion and pancetta would be nice. The order of the ingredients list should match how they're listed in the directions. The photo is obviously of something else, and we're not supposed to look at it very closely. Was the recipe in bad shape like this when it came off the Babbo web site? Eh, no matter, I'm sure this tastes great.
justcook at 10:52AM on 12/19/08
I too made this this week (must be the cold weather). I made it from the
Silver Spoon recipe which calls for the same ingredients except for 1 fresh chile seeded and chopped (no red pepper flakes) and no parsley. Total cooking time 10 minutes for saute and 40 minutes covered. Easy and delicious.
elaine nan at 12:01PM on 12/19/08
@justcook - good detective work!!!!
pooch at 5:27PM on 12/19/08
justcook: Thanks for pointing out these inconsistencies. I apologize for the confusion! Besides changing the pasta shape, the photo is a picture of the actual dish that I made in my kitchen according to the recipe above. There were no olives (though that reminds me of Puttanesca, also delicious, and now I want to eat a bowl of that!) and I did use red onion half-moons.
The recipe on the Babbo website is not super-exact, no. It doesn't specify how to chop the garlic, and it does call for whole parsley leaves. So when I made it I did a little improvising (like chiffonading the parsley and adding a little olive oil because I found it necessary). As far as a cooking time for the onions, it depends on heat, but I cooked mine for about five minutes. Good luck!
Blake Royer at 8:43AM on 12/20/08