All recipes written by Gordon Ramsay
The amatriciana sauce it is a classic condiment of Lazio cuisine, now famous throughout Italy. The name refers to the city of Amatrice, in the province of Rieti. The most appropriate combination is the one with the very famous bucatinibut you can also try with i tagliolini or with spaghetti.
The amatriciana sauce it is prepared with diced bacon and chopped tomatoes: here is the unique and original recipe to prepare it with spaghetti.
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.
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.
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.
For kitchen purists we are about to write a heresy, but know that amatriciana, this sauce so famous and loved by all, born in a small town in Lazio, called Amatrice, can be prepared even without the pig cheek, ingredient not always available for those not in those areas. We offer you two variants, different but equally tasty, don't despair!
A possible variation to the pillow may be the bacon, a salami that is obtained precisely from the belly of the pig, and which can be sweet or smoked. For the amatriciana the correct version is the sweet one. It has a fat appearance with thin layers of meat. The piece of pork is put in salt and left to rest for a few days. Together with salt you can also add some spices, such as pepper, cloves and juniper. Then the actual maturing process begins, which can last from 50 to 120 days, depending on the size. At the end you will get a delicatessen with a delicate and sweet taste, perfect for seasoning a nice plate of amatriciana spaghetti!
Do you know him? It is a very particular salami, salted, seasoned and slightly smoked and is presented in slices of Red edged with white fat, fragrant and appetizing. It is mainly produced in the lower Lombardy region, in the areas of Vigevano, Pavia and Mortara, and in Friuli Venezia Giulia. On the palate it is softer and more delicate than salami made with pork, but equally tasty. It can be sliced with a knife and browned in a little oil. You will get crispy and tasty morsels, which will go well with tomato sauce and pecorino romano.
Once you have found all the ingredients you need to prepare yours tomato and bacon, you just have to make sure you don't miss cooking pasta, which can be spaghetti or bucatino, as you prefer. To obtain the best result, the indispensable operation is to risotto the pasta: in this way its starch will mix with the tomato sauce, making this sauce much more creamy and homogeneous. Then drain the pasta a few minutes before perfect cooking, keeping two ladles of cooking water. Then pour the pasta into the pan with the sauce, mix well and add the cooking water. So cook your spaghetti until they are al dente, adding more water if necessary. Once the pasta is cooked, sprinkle with a tablespoon of pecorino cheese and serve immediately without the bacon: you can do it!
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