Tag Archives: bacon

Cooking like an Italian: Bucatini all’Amatriciana

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Bucatini all'Amatriciana

Bucatini all’amatriciana: oh my, how many difficult words are in this simple dish?

Bucatini: it’s a thick spaghetto with a hole (buco) in the middle

Amatriciana: it’s a kind of pasta sauce, originating from Amatrice, a village north of Rome.

It is a basic Italian dish, but as all basic Italian dishes, every family has its own version and unique way to prepare it!

This version is from a Rome friend who was so kind to share it with us on a Sunday lunch and was even kinder to send his family recipe. As with many traditional Italian dishes there are few ingredients, but I did my best to give you a foolproof version of the original recipe.

Ingredients are the key element here, so treat yourself: look for the best pasta di grano duro, the best guanciale, the best passata (tomato purée) and the best pecorino.

Ingredients

200 g guanciale (you can use, if guanciale it is difficult to find, smoked bacon, but it won0t be the same), in slices 5 millimetres thick

1/4 onion, chopped

White vinegar, a splash

500 ml passata

Salt

Dry flakes of chilly pepper

Grated pecorino (a lot!)

400 g bucatini

It serves 4 people

  1. Cut the guanciale in large strips.
  2. Put a big, tall pot full of water to boil
  3. In a big hot pan on a low fire, fry the guanciale in its own fat with the chopped onion.
  4. When the guanciale is beginning to brown, raise the flame to the maximum, add the splash of white vinegar and let it evaporate completely.
  5. Lower the flame to medium, add passata, a pinch or two of salt (remember the guanciale is already quite salted), and peperoncino. Let the sauce reduce and thicken on a high heat (careful of the burning split).
  6. Salt the water in the big pot and let it go back to boiling.
  7. Add the bucatini e cook them for the amount of time stated on the pack, minus 2 minutes.
  8. When the bucatini are done, drain them and add them to the pan with the sauce.
  9. Keep turning and stirring for maximum 2 minutes, adding pecorino.
  10. Serve immediately with more pecorino on top.

Ragù di carne

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Il sugo

Bolognaise sauce, sauce bolognaise, ragù alla bolognese. Call it as you please, but please please please, make it in the right way! No strange stuff, like cilantro, cream, spring onions…

Keep it simple and plain!

The only difficult part, if you can call it so, it’s the long cooking hours, but you can cut them down making it in a pressure cooker.

Lets’ start from the basics.

Ingredients

500 g premium choice minced beef

100 g diced pancetta (or diced bacon)

2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil

1/2 onion

1 garlic clove

1 carrot

1 celery stalk

1/2 glass of dry red wine

1/2 glass of milk

800 g canned tomatoes, better whole, using even the sauce inside the cans

1 tablespoon triple tomato purée

Salt and pepper

2 pinches of sugar

For 6 people as pasta sauce or for a 4 people lasagna

  1. Finely chop the onion.
  2. Peel and finely chop the garlic and the carrot.
  3. Clean and finely chop the celery stalk.
  4. In a large sauce pan, possibly with high-sided, heat the olive oil. Add the pancetta and the onion and mildly brown them.
  5. Add the carrot and the garlic, and finally the celery.
  6. Add the minced beef and turn it with a wooden fork, crumble it. Let it cook, stirring, until brown. Salt and pepper.
  7. Turn up the heat and add the wine. Let it evaporate.
  8. Add the milk, and always keeping you fire up, cook the sauce and let the milk to be absorbed by the meat.
  9. Add the caned tomatoes, tomato purée and sugar, stir, lower the fire to the minimum, cover and let it cook for 2-3 hours, stirring occasionally.

Note

You can add, if you really really want it, some basil leaves, but they are superfluous.

In season, you can substitute the canned tomatoes with fresh skinned ones. Bring to the boil a big pan of water. Cook the whole tomatoes until the skin begin to pop off. Drain them, pell, chop and add them to the sauce like the canned tomatoes.

Pasta with leek, endive and bacon

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Pasta with endive, leek and bacon

A few months ago I opened another food blog, in Italian, and I published the recipe that it’s at the base of this pasta. While I was cooking it I though it could have done a perfect side dish, *and* a perfect pasta dish :)

For 2 people

200 g high quality pasta, short kind

200g diced bacon

1 Belgian endive

1 leek

1/4 glass white wine

Finely slice the leek and the Belgian endive.

In a large no-stick pan, heat the diced bacon and when the fat is begin to split out, add endive and leek. Stir fry for few minutes, then add the wine and let evaporate.

In the mean while, cook the pasta according to the package instructions.

Drain it al dente (the pasta must still have  a slightly hard heart) and toss it in the endive and leek pan.

Give a good stir and serve immediately.

Stuffed and roasted guinea fowl

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Roasted guinea fowl

A good stuffed and roasted guinea fowl is something merry and wintery, that will add to your post-holiday dinner a reminder of the late Christmas and New’s year celebrations.

1 guinea fowl (enough for 4 to 6 people)

For the stuffing:

300 g chestnuts, peeled and boiled (our chestnuts were a courtesy of a fellow Italian blogger and friend, LaPaoly)

200 g diced bacon

1 onion, finely chopped

50 g dried apricots

50 g dried plums

1/2 glass Marsala or sherry

Take the guinea fowl out of the fridge at least 1 hour before to cook it.

Preheat the oven at 160° C.

Heat a non-stick pan and stir in the bacon. Stir fry, in the bacon’s fat the onion. Add chestnuts, apricots, plums and stir well.

Add the wine and let it evaporate. Transfer the stuffing in a bowl and let it cool.

Salt and pepper the guinea fowl cavity. Add the stuffing and close it sewing it.

Lay the guinea fowl in a shallow baking tin sprinkled with 2 tablespoons of olive oil. Cook in the hot oven for 2 hours, or until the skin is crispy.

Let it rest for a few minutes outside the oven before to carve it and serve it.

Serve it with roasted potatoes, or a celery root, carrots and potatoes mash.

Le marché de St. Afrique

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