Bucatini all'amatriciana

Ingredients

• Bucatini400 g
• Guanciale — in short batons150 g
• San Marzano tomatoes400 g
• Pecorino romano — finely grated80 g
• Dried chilli1
• Dry white wine60 ml
• Saltto taste

Salt and spices grow more slowly than the rest: doubling a dish does not double the pepper.

Weight converts to ounces and volume to cups. Grams of flour are not turned into cups, because that depends on how tightly it is packed.

Method

1. 1

   Put the guanciale into a cold dry pan and turn on a medium flame. A slow start renders the fat completely; a hot pan burns the outside and leaves it tough within.

   8 min

2. 2

   When the pieces turn glassy and gold at the edges, lift half of them out for the top. Pour in the wine and let it cook away.

   3 min

3. 3

   Crush the tomatoes by hand, add them with the chilli and simmer for ten minutes. The sauce should thicken without losing its red.

   10 min

4. 4

   Boil the bucatini a minute short, move it into the sauce with a ladle of its water and finish it over the flame for half a minute.

   10 min

5. 5

   Off the heat, stir in the pecorino and serve. The reserved guanciale goes on top with a little more cheese.

About the dish

Amatriciana is one of the four classical Roman sauces and has exactly three required ingredients. Anything beyond them Romans regard as vandalism, and they have a point: the sauce lives on that plainness.

Guanciale, cured pork jowl, is not interchangeable with bacon. Its fat is different — it renders more slowly and stays soft rather than turning into a dry crisp.

The pecorino romano is grated fine and stirred in off the heat. On a hot pan a sheep's cheese seizes into lumps that never come back.

Worth knowing

• — Salt the pasta water generously and the sauce barely at all: the guanciale and pecorino are already salty.
• — Bucatini is hollow and the sauce gets inside. Without it use spaghetti, but not a small shape.
• — Pasta water is not waste. Its starch binds the fat to the tomato, and without it the sauce splits.

Nutrition

Per serving at the base yield, calculated from the ingredients rather than measured in a lab.

Calories

610 kcal

Protein

24 g

Fat

24 g

Carbs

74 g

More from Italy

• Spaghetti carbonara — Pasta from four ingredients: guanciale, eggs, pecorino and pepper. There is no cream in it and never was.
• Risotto alla milanese — A saffron risotto built on stock and near-constant stirring, which is what pulls the starch out of the rice and makes it creamy.
• Pesto alla genovese — Basil ground with garlic and pine nuts. No heat and no blender — a mortar and a cool room.