FOR a simple
dish, pasta allamatriciana is freighted with
controversy.
People in Amatrice say it originated in that central
Italian town, as the name implies. But in Rome, about 60 miles away, chefs proudly
claim it as their own and say its name has nothing
to do with its origins.
In Amatrice, the dish is simply pasta, tomatoes, cured pork
and cheese. But Romans include onions and olive oil. Even the type of
pasta is in dispute.
After half a
dozen plates of it during a recent trip to Italy, one detail became clear: for
any pasta allamatriciana to be authentic, it
must be made with guanciale - cured, unsmoked pig jowl.
Italians take guanciale for granted, but its fairly new to
American kitchens. Almost all the recipes in American cookbooks call for
ordinary bacon - which is too smoky - or Italian pancetta, which is
too lean. Guanciale, which means pillow, a description of its shape, has an
especially rich, sweetly porky flavor and a buttery texture.
Anne Burrell, the
chef at Centro Vinoteca in Greenwich
Village, who once worked with Mario Batali, makes her bucatini
allamatriciana with very crisp rashers of guanciale. "Its all about the guanciale," she said of the dish.
When I asked Sandro Fioriti, chef and owner of
Sandros on the Upper East
Side, what he used in his bucatini
allamatriciana, Mr. Fioriti,
a Roman, pointed to his cheek. "Guanciale",
he said.
But most
cookbooks never mention guanciale. Even if they did, where
would the American cook find it? Thats why, until
recently, it was nearly impossible to prepare bucatini
allamatriciana properly outside of Italy.
Salumeria Biellese at 376-378 Eighth Avenue
(29th Street)
was about the only shop in New York
that sold guanciale.
Now, however,
there are new American sources. La Quercia, a
producer of cured pork in Iowa,
makes it and sells it online at laquercia.us and at
Fairway markets. Armandino Batali,
Mario Batalis father, has a Seattle company, Salumi
Artisan Cured Meats, that sells it at salumicuredmeats.com
.
Good
guanciale makes all the difference, said the actor
Michael Tucker, an accomplished cook, who, with his wife, the actress Jill
Eikenberry, has a house in Umbria. In his book, "Living in a
Foreign Language" (Atlantic Monthly Press, 2007), he describes buying guanciale from Ugo Mazzoli, the butcher in Campello sul Clitunno, near his house.
I first started making bucatini allamatriciana
nearly 30 years ago, after I was working on a movie in Rome
and was taken to a restaurant near the Vatican that served it," he said.
"If you look in Marcella Hazans book, or Alfredo Viazzi,"
he said of two Italian cookbook authors, "they recommend bacon or
pancetta. Its not the same."
To expand my understanding, Mr.
Tucker and Ms. Eikenberry came with me on a
fact-finding trip to Amatrice.
The road to the town is lined with
signs trumpeting the local specialty. A tip from Fred Plotkin,
a food writer and expert on Italy, led us to the restaurant Albergo
La Conca, where the owner, Roberto Antinori, explained that a
first-rate rendition of the dish required only guanciale,
tomatoes, thick spaghetti (not bucatini, which he
said comes from Rome), lavish amounts of grated aged local pecorino cheese (a
sharp, salty sheeps cheese), plus pinches of chili or peperoncino. In Amatrice, this dish does
not contain onions, an important ingredient of the Roman version.
At La Conca
we also tried pasta alla gricia,
sometimes called "white amatriciana" because it is made with slivers of guanciale, black pepper, drifts of pecorino and no
tomatoes. Often, a short macaroni like
rigatoni, locally called mezzemani, replaces the bucatini. It is supposedly a
more ancient recipe, predating the arrival of tomatoes. Mr. Antinori said it was a shepherds dish from Grisciano, a nearby town.
We found Grisciano
and, tempted despite a two-pasta lunch in Amatrice,
stopped on the way back to Umbria.
It was a dismal hamlet with no restaurant.
The
tomato-less version can be overwhelmed by the richness of the guanciale. But when the dish is well made, as it was at La Conca and at Sandros in New York, where I tried it after returning from Italy, the
sharpness of the cheese and pepper balance the pork. I also
noticed that in Italy,
the guanciale is tender, not crisp as in American
versions, so its flavor is more pronounced.
Extending my research to Rome, I had intended to
try the dish again at Il Matriciano but the
restaurant was closed. So I ate in Lo Scopettaro, in Testaccio, Romes
meatpacking district, where the dish was made in strict Amatrice
fashion, without onions or olive oil. At Gusto Osteria,
part of a modern complex of wine bars and restaurants not far from the Piazza Navona, it was made with rigatoni and, certainly to the dismay of purists, shreds of fresh basil.
LAmbasciata
dAbruzzo in the Parioli
district also makes it without onions, and furthermore, claims that the dish is from Abruzzo, since Amatrice was once within that region, not Lazio, the region
where Amatrice and Rome are now located. Thats
what Anna Teresa Callen also contends in her book
"Food and Memories of Abruzzo" (Wiley,
2004).
Mr. Fioriti
of Sandros insists the dish comes from Rome. And he uses onions.
There are also some theories that the
name of the dish has nothing whatever to
do with Amatrice, and that, indeed, it should be
called bucatini alla matriciana, as it
sometimes is in Rome.
The exact meaning of matriciana is open to question,
too, with one theory suggesting that it refers to a wild herb, called matricale in Italy. But
except for the basil at Gusto, we never had it with herbs. Another
possibility that was put forth is that alla matriciana is the same as amatriciana, with the
absence of the initial "a" because of a Roman dialect.
Back from exploring, Mr. Tucker
prepared his version at his Umbrian home. He started his guanciale
in a little olive oil and used onions, the traditional Roman way. The tomatoes were the canned San Marzano
variety, which is what restaurants use. And he also added garlic and some Parmigiano-Reggiano to the
pecorino - touches that distressed
his Roman friend Bruno Rubeo, a set
designer who lives nearby. Nonetheless, Mr. Rubeo,
whom Mr. Tucker refers to as "the
pasta police", admits that Mr. Tuckers amatriciana, while unorthodox, is delicious. It is.
Thats because I used Ugos guanciale", Mr.
Tucker said, heaping praise on his butcher. Hes
probably right. But even when I made it with La Quercias
guanciale from Iowa,
my bucatini allamatriciana
was infinitely better than it ever was with bacon or pancetta.
As for the bucatini
alla gricia, it is not
worth attempting without guanciale. And from now on,
even when I make spaghetti alla carbonara,
I will use slivers of guanciale instead of bacon or
pancetta. Im
a convert.