Cheek to Cheek

Caravaggio's Bacchus

Anyone who’s known me for more than a minute has probably heard me say that the Italians just got everything right. As an art history major, I have a soft spot for all things Renaissance, as well as ardent infatuations with Caravaggio, Bernini, Botticelli, and Michelangelo (despite the latter’s rumored sexual preferences- apparently 450 years ain’t the only thing keeping us apart…). As a cook and a voracious eater of all cuisines, if I had to choose only one to sustain me for the rest of my life, it would be Italian. I think I could happily exist on ciabatta, prosciutto, and various cheeses alone, with a few tomatoes thrown in for health purposes (tomatoes drenched with olive oil, of course). As a wine enthusiast and frequent imbiber, I always find myself going back to Italian wines; there are countless regions with drastically different styles, arcane grapes that would take me years to get straight, and a rustic, dusty style redolent of cedar and cherries that permeates and imbues the wines with a sense of earth and age. I could go on and on (another thing that becomes obvious when you’ve known me for more than a minute), but another thing that the Italians have down to an art is how to confuse the shit out of even the most seemingly simple things, and turn them into matters of pride. Now, I don’t say this with disdain- as someone for whom nothing in life remains simple for long, I think the Italian penchant for churning the waters makes life more interesting (I’ve often considered how much more lively my family gathering would be if I were born into a big Italian brood, instead of the waspy New Englander hand I was dealt). This phenomenon was brought to my attention recently as I was preparing to cook up a meal of pasta all’Amatriciana, a dish which I had been vaguely familiar with but had never attempted myself. Browsing recipes online, I found a number that called for onions and bucatini, and some in which the allium was notably absent, and the noodle of choice was spaghetti. Now, I’m used to recipe variation, even in what is ostensibly a long-established dish, but my curiosity revealed that in this case, it was more than just random.

The town of Amatrice

Originally, there was a dish called gricia, from the village of Grisciano, of course, which contained pepper, cheese, and guanciale. What is guanciale? Oooh, my friends, we’ll get to that. After the introduction of tomatoes and the resulting sauces to Italy, a dish developed in the town of Amatrice in Lazio which utilized the base ingredients of gricia, but added a tomato-based sauce. Being that Amatrice was primarily a shepherds’ town, the food was basic, peasant food, and contained no onions, garlic, or herbs. What was this dish called? Amatriciana, of course. (That whole Italian pride thing starting to make sense?) Contacts between Rome and Amatrice meant that the dish was soon adopted by the capital city, where it became known as ‘matriciana’, apparently due to the tendency in the Romanesque dialect to drop sounds from the beginning of words. (Although proud Amatrice-dwellers might tell you that it was Rome’s attempt to phonetically sever the dish from its city of origin, thereby making it their own- sounds logical, right?) Whatever the reason, this pasta dish branched off into two distinct entities: the Roman version, which added onion and sometimes garlic, and used bucatini (long, tubular noodles) as a base, and the eponymous city’s version, lacking onion and garlic and commonly served over spaghetti.

Quarrelsome Italian towns and their pasta sauce-centered egos aside, there’s one common denominator that not even Rome and Amatrice could find a bone of contention with- cured pork jowl. That’s right, the aforementioned guanciale is like a fattier, un-smoked version of bacon or pancetta prepared with a pig’s cheek (guancia means cheek in Italian). For reasons unbeknownst to me, it’s nearly impossible to find in the United States, but is revered enough in central Italy to bring two neighboring towns together in pork-fueled culinary accord- kinda makes you wonder if bacon could bring about world peace…anyway, since I am very decidedly (and unfortunately) nowhere near Italy, central or otherwise, you might be wondering how I planned on cooking up this historically-charged pasta repast. This is where having foodie friends comes in handy, and having Italian foodie friends is damn near priceless. Having recently received the gift of a cured jowl from just such a friend, I set out to make pasta all’Amatriciana.

Luckily, there were no Romans or Amatricians in my kitchen that evening, so I could shamelessly deviate from both versions with no fear of consequence. I decided to include onion and garlic simply because…well, they’re tasty (sorry Amatrician shepherds). I also decided that I was going to make my own pasta, so bucatini was out, (take that, Rome!) and for the sake of neutrality, I went with linguine. I whirred 2 cups of AP flour and 3 eggs in the food processor, kneaded by hand for a few minutes, and then let it rest while I chopped garlic (about 4 cloves), onion (I used half of a Vidalia, sliced thin), and- ooooohhh- guanciale. My jowl had been in the back of my fridge for a couple weeks awaiting a worthy occasion, and emerged firm and fragrant, flecked with thyme leaves and still attached to a scrap of string that had been used to hang it while it cured. Burgundy flesh streaked the creamy fat, and I sliced about half the cheek into lardons, approximately ¼-by-¼-by-1 inch, but any size will do. The pork hit the skillet and sizzled until it rendered most of its fat and became deep brown and crispy. A bed of paper towels received the dripping bits and held them until they were needed again (lucky paper towels) and the garlic hit the hot pork fat in the pan. Next came onions and red pepper flakes (about ½ teaspoon). The fond begged for deglazing, but not having any opened white wine (and not wanting to waste a splash of the Friulian merlot that was to accompany dinner), I reached for the bottle of Lillet Blanc that had gone into our pre-dinner corpse reviver #2s and added a splash. A large (28-oz) can of whole San 

Marzano tomatoes followed, crushed by hand in transit from can to skillet. This concoction bubbled for a few minutes while the pasta water- heavily salted, of course- came to a boil and the freshly hand-cranked strands of linguine were dropped in. After a few minutes, I transferred the noodles to the sauce along with the guanciale, some freshly ground pepper, a splash of the pasta water, and a generous grating of pecorino. After hitting the plate, another flurry of cheese and we were ready to go. Slightly spicy, rich with mellow porkiness and the tang of aged sheep’s milk cheese- I could see why multiple locales strove to claim the dish as their own. With the smooth Friulian red in our glasses, the controversy of distant European cities melted even further away. I think the Romans and the Amatricians both would have been proud, since if there’s one thing most Italians can agree on- besides cured meats, that is- it’s that no matter what’s being disputed, when the food hits the table, you shut up and eat.