Guanciale
Yet another edible gift!
I dropped by to see Alberta yesterday, she of the artisanal pork, and only Carlo, Mr. Alberta, was at home. He told me to wait a minute because he had a gift for me. Out he ran and shortly returned with this. It is the cheek of a hog, which I think is hog jowl in the United States. It is cured by rubbing in various things, finished with black pepper, and hung for a while. I was pretty delighted to get this, because it isn’t always at my supermarket.
If you aren’t a purist, you can make recipes that call for speck, pancetta dolce or pancetta affumicata with guanciale. I usually end up substituting the other direction, because it is guanciale I sometimes can’t find. It can take the place of salt pork, but it really isn’t like salt pork. It’s drier for one thing. It isn’t as salty, either. My memories of salt pork are fading, since it really isn’t something I used a lot in my last years in America and I have now been away long enough not to recognize the names of the new movie stars. It is also no substitute for bacon. If you slice this and fry it you may be disgusted. You won’t be delighted.
My first stop was Olga’s house, because although Carlo told me to keep it in a cool place, I wasn’t sure how cool or which place I own that might work. Olga thinks the guest room, but I think I should run a poll asking who would be frightened by a piece of pork hanging over their bed before I do that. Any votes?
I couldn’t wait to try it. I quickly made some very thin slices with my sharpest French knife– actually my only sharp knife– and ate them. It is yummy. Thinly sliced on bread is one of the ways one eats guanciale here.
Today, realizing that the pantry is almost empty of non-diet foods and that the diet begins soon, I made a sort of amatriciana sauce for pasta. That’s one of the quickest and easiest and most versatile of quick sauces in our kitchens here, and this one was delicious. Cutting board to fork was maybe fifteen minutes. There’s no excuse for eating junky food when you can eat as well as I did in fifteen minutes without a microwave. I just used what was lying around to make it, too. Spaghetti because it was open, Parmigiano because it was there.
Two servings:
130 grams of spaghetti uncooked
about 30-50 grams of guanciale, rind removed and then diced smallish
1/2 onion, chopped
1/2 14 ounce tin of peeled tomatoes
1 clove of garlic
about 1 ounce of Parmigiano Reggiano, grated with my Microplane
Start a big pot of water to boil.
Put a largeish frying pan on to heat and throw the guanciale dice and the onion into it. The onion will sauté in the fat released by the guanciale, but do use a medium heat so as not to brown or scorch the onion.
Add salt to the water and then the spaghetti, pushing it down to cover it as it softens. Stir once. As soon as it boils, ladle some of the pasta water into the frying pan to speed the onion cooking. Then add the tomatoes, breaking them up with a wooden spoon. Throw in a whole clove of garlic. Bring to a simmer. Grate the cheese into a pasta bowl.
When the spaghetti is al dente, drain it, remove the garlic clove from the sauce, add the spaghetti to the sauce, turning until it is well coated, then turn off the heat, toss the grated cheese over it and stir it in. Serve smoking hot.
There’s no photo of the pasta, because I ate it immediately and virtually smacked my lips continuously.
7 comments February 6th, 2007
