L'Amatriciana is a sauce, typically found in Italian taverns, which we call "Osterie", or "Trattorie" from Rome. The main ingredients are: guanciale (pig chick), pecorino (cheese) e pommodoro (tomatoes). The name of this sauce comes from its place of origin, Amatrice town, where the dish was born in the nineteenth century.
This sugo (sauce) is the son of another famous one, Gricia, pepper e ganciale.
For this sauce, buy proper Italian ingredients and follow the original recipe! Variety of pasta to use: spaghetti or bucatini.
For 2 people:
200g bucatini (or spaghetti)
200g peeled tomatoes
80g guanciale cut into thick slices
30g pecorino grated
1 chili
1/3 glass of dry and acidulous white win
1 garlic clove
Boil a large pan of water and salt where you will be cooking your pasta.
In a non-stick pan, place the slices of guancile with a drizzle of oil at medium heat until the “foam” produced by the melting of the fat is consumed, and then add the white wine. Once the wine evaporates and the guanciale has taken on a golden yellow colour, set it aside in another container. Using the same pan where the guanciale was cooked, add the garlic clove and the tomato sauce and/or pulp, salt and pepper and/or chilli. Bring to the boil, and cook over a high heat for 10-20 minutes or until the sauce has acquired a creamy consistency. The garlic clove can then be removed (the garlic is only to give extra flavour; this is a tip from my friends in Roma and is not in the original recipe), the browned guanciale be introduced again and cooked for another 5-10 minutes.
Drain the pasta 30 seconds before the cooking time, and add to the pan with the sauce and some retained pasta water. Keeping at medium heat, let the pasta cook for the last 30 seconds together with the sauce, to take all the flavour. Sprinkle and serve with a lot of grated pecorino.
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