Does the original Amatriciana recipe include onion? Better spaghetti or bucatini? Let's clarify once and for all the doubts about this traditional first course as much loved as much discussed
Amatriciana is one of those recipes capable of arousing great emotions, both when you eat it and when you talk about it. The diatribes mainly concern the ingredients to be used: Amatriciana with onion or without, bacon or bacon, long or short pasta? The questions are many, but there original recipe of amatriciana there is only one, deposited in the Municipality of Amatrice.
Amatriciana: original recipe registered
Let's begin to dispel the first doubts: in the original recipe of amatriciana there is no onion nor garlic. The main ingredients are exclusively bacon, tomatoes and grated pecorino cheese. The pasta format? Amatrice's recipe includes spaghetti and not the bucatini.
Ingredients
500 g of spaghetti
125 g of Amatrice bacon
6 or 7 San Marzano tomatoes or 400 g of peeled tomatoes
100 g of grated pecorino di Amatrice
a tablespoon of extra virgin olive oil
a drop of dry white wine
a piece of chilli
salt
Amatriciana original recipe from Amatrice: Procedure
Put the oil, chilli pepper and the bacon cut into small pieces in a pan, preferably of iron.
“The proportion of a quarter, compared to pasta, is traditional and sacred for the experts and, or you put the pig cheek, that is to say the part of the pork jaw, or they are not spaghetti amatriciana, only with it will they have an unsurpassed delicacy and sweetness ".
Brown over high heat and deglaze with the wine. Remove the pieces of bacon from the pan, drain well and set aside, preferably warm. This avoids the risk of them becoming too dry or salty and will remain softer and tastier.
Add the tomatoes cut into fillets and cleaned of seeds (better blanch them first, to remove the skin more easily). Season with salt, stir and cook for a few minutes. Remove the chilli, add the pieces of bacon again and mix the sauce.
Meanwhile cook the spaghetti al dente, in plenty of salted water. Drain the pasta and put it in a bowl adding the grated pecorino. Wait a few seconds and then pour the sauce. Stir and, if you wish, add more pecorino.
Like all the recipes of our splendid Italian cuisine, Amatriciana also lends itself to different interpretations: there are those who prefer not to use chilli, those who brown the bacon in its own fat without adding oil and those who do not blend with wine. You just have to decide whether to follow Amatrice's recipe or your creativity.
Amatriciana: origin and curiosity
Once all doubts about the original recipe of amatriciana have been clarified, we can move on to some curiosities about his origin.
Did you know that the amatriciana was born in white? Only towards the end of the 1700s, with the arrival of the tomato, did it turn red. The chef Francesco Leonardi talks about it for the first time in his Modern Apicius (1790), explaining how the amatriciana is the evolution of gricia with the addition of tomato.
Until 1927, Amatrice was part of the province of L'Aquila, so amatriciana is not really a recipe of Roman cuisine. It was the shepherds, with their seasonal movements linked to transhumance, who brought this dish to the Roman countryside. It seems that its definitive diffusion was sanctioned by the emigration of the Amatricians to Rome due to the pastoral crisis and their consequent use in catering. The rest is all thanks to the goodness of the sauce, which has made it popular since the nineteenth century and transformed it into a timeless classic.
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